[NWPilgrim]

My intended use of the chrono is for comparative purposes, whether it is accurate to an absolute velocity reference is not important for me. At any rate, short of shooting under laboratory conditions (special test barrels, temperature and humiduty control, etc.) I am not sure you could ever get absolute "accurate" velocities. Just too many variables from some testing lab to my range conditions.

At any rate what I am looking for is how my loads compare to a common factory load I use. My local cheap ammo is Remington UMC. So I would like to know how fast or slow my pistol or rifle ammo of the same weight compares to UMC.

Secondly I want to know how well one load using powder A compares to another of my loads using powder B. For instance, If I am loading 75gr OTM bullets in .223 the velocity is dropping pretty quickly rom the normal 3,200 for a 55 gr. bullet. Once I find an accurate load for this bullet with each of a few powders such as Varget, BL-C(2), TAC and RL15 then I would like to know which powder gives me the best combination of accuracy and velocity for longer ranges.

Thirdly, consumer level chronies can still provide some measure of safety. If the load book shows a powder at max should give 2,800 fps velocity out of a 22" barrel and if one of my test loads starts hitting near that even before I have reached powder weight then I would take that as a warning that either I made a mistake or my rifle/ammo combination is running hotter than the loading manual conditions and I should not shoot any loads with more powder than what gave me the book max velocities. The chrony maybe off 50fps or 100 fps, who knows for sure, but I doubt they are off more than that from absolute and once I get ammo into that neighborhood I am calling it good enough. This would be more critical for someone purposely loading beyond the listed powder weights for experiments, but I am just a recreational loader and shooter. It's like your car speedometer. Does anyone have a truly accurate speedometer, or are most within an acceptable accuracy of +/- 3mp so who cares?

Fourth, like Doc I am just naturally curious. After handloading for 20+ years I kind of want to know what some of my best loads are clocking.