Ballistic Software and digital shooting aids

During the past 10 years long-range shooting has undergone a revolution of sorts. Most long range shooters, many Military Snipers, and 'extreme' hunters these days use some form of ballistic computer. As a result they are able to make accurate shots that would never have been possible for them without a digital aid.

This does not eliminate the traditional shooting to collect dope, but rather supplements... once a shooter establishes a good baseline for his weapon and ammunition the ballistic computer can tell the shooter where his round is going to hit, and also how much that point of impact will change with changing weather conditions. This can make a decent range shooter effective well past his normal comfort zone.

Other tools that have become popular are hand held range finders. They are now relatively inexpensive and even the cheap ones are typically good to 500 meters or so.

Also hand-held weather meters such as a Kestrel. Changing atmospheric conditions (think a guy hunting in the mountains) can contribute quite a deal to your point of impact at range.

Chronograph: used at the range, a good chronograph can give you the real deal on the ammunition you are shooting and can help you figure out how consistent it really is. It also gives you a great baseline to enter into a ballistic program.

I am currently running ATRAG software from Horus. It works great and is shooter-focused. In other words I don't have to know the Muzzle Velocity, G7 BC for every single velocity step, and other arcana in order to use the software... You can enter what you know (either Muzzle Velocity or a base BC) and the software will help you figure the rest out by shooting at different ranges, and entering that data back into the PDA. It is fast, relatively simple and it works well. However, it doesn't bother with some of the nit noid things that a dedicated benchrest shooter may care about... It is all about 'good enough'. Data you need in order to use the software: Caliber, Bullet Weight, BC or MV (both is best), rifling twist, height of optics above bore, atmospherics.

There are other programs out there and I have tried a couple, but keep getting hung up on the wierd stuff they expect me to know just to get it working at all.

What have you guys tried? How does it work?

 

I use the JBM ballistic software on my phone for straight-up benchrest MOA shooting and load development, but it does ask for a good bit of the minutia you mentioned. I like that has preprogrammed G1-G7 ballistic profiles of the vast majority of available commercial and military bullets that have been already hashed out by a world record holding palma shooter who had an advanced degree in aerospace engineering and a doppler radar. Long story, short; it will account for variable BC' very accurately provided you plug in an accurate and consistent MV. A chronograph is a must for this software. While not perfect for field use, it's still relevant in that you can quickly call up a saved load along with the elevation and atmospheric conditions from when that load was zero'd. The feature that accounts for wind drift is neat in that it gives me a good idea of what my bullet will be doing in given conditions but I don't rely on it to make turret adjustments for reasons I'm sure you're already aware of. From there it takes all of 5 seconds to convert to present conditions and it will spit out dope in turret click intervals.

For minute of dude shooting, I just use range cards with my dope divided up in to 3 temperature-dependent brackets in 25 meter intervals.