Do they make a reloading manual for my PC?


Thank you

I know Barnes gives away a free CD on their web site for choosing the right bullet for a job. It may have load data? Your best bet is to use an on-line resource rather than a a disk. All the powder company web sites have some load data. In addition, you can join LoadSwap at the top of this page. There is a subscription service Wolfe Publishing (Handloader magazine, etc) is connected with called LoadData.com. It has quite a fair amount of material in it, too, though these are recipe's and not a range of loads. You have to know to drop these loads 10% and work up. The exception is Dan Newberry's recipe list of Optimum Charge Weight (OCW) loads (http://home.earthlink.net/~dannewberry/dannewberrysoptimalchargeweightloaddevelopment/id6.html). These loads are not to be altered, but you absolutely must follow their brass (Winchester) and primer combinations. Look to see if the chambering and bullet you are interested in is there?

A little more sophistication can be had with QuickLOAD and Load From A Disk, which actually calculate internal ballistics, but you can only estimate loads from these programs. You still have to back off the recommendations and work up, same as with peak loads in a printed manual. Load From A Disk has a free 30 day demo available for .30 caliber only and a limited bullet weight range, but this will let you see if it is what you want or if it is too complicated at your level of experience? http://www.loadammo.com/

Sierra Bullets offers their manual on a cd. It is also offered with some ballistic software as an option.


Cheezywan

Do they still? I know they used to, but I was over looking at the manual specifically to answer this thread, and didn't see a CD option on the manual purchase page. They've had their external ballistics software forever. I've got an early version somewhere. I just thought I'd remembered the manual was there, too, but didn't spot it today. Could be I just had a blindspot epsisode. ;) Can you link to it?

Do they still? I know they used to, but I was over looking at the manual specifically to answer this thread, and didn't see a CD option on the manual purchase page. They've had their external ballistics software forever. I've got an early version somewhere. I just thought I'd remembered the manual was there, too, but didn't spot it today. Could be I just had a blindspot epsisode. ;) Can you link to it?

Found it at Midway. Item #255-494. I didn't check the Sierra site. I would provide a link if I knew how. I havn't figured out how to do that on this forum? Works fine on an e-mail but not here.

What did you think of the ballistic software? I am aware that you have more sofisticated software now. Would it be useful to a shooter/reloader?

Cheezywan

Cheezywan,

It would have been a DOS version of the Sierra program that I had, but a lot will have changed since then. I remember you could enter all the various weather conditions. The bullet database was all Sierra bullets, but you could specify others to build your own collection up. I can recall it would allow you to run at least two overlapping trajectories for comparison; maybe more. Like most exterior ballistics programs, it depended on tables of G1 ballistic coefficients that change with velocity ranges. This method has accuracy limits, and when you shoot out to 600 yards, you often find your actual sight settings are several clicks different from the program prediction. This is because the G1 coefficients are based on just one standard flat base projectile, whose shape doesn't match the different modern shapes closely enough. The range values published aren’t fine enough for high precision.

A more modern approach developed by the military uses different types of ballistic coefficients that are specialized for different projectile shapes. For example, there is the G5 type of BC used for boattail match bullets like the 168 grain Sierra MatchKing. There is the G7 type of BC for long boattail tangent ogive VLD shapes. When you pick the right model you then get just one BC number for all velocities, and does it more accurately than the stepped G1 BC ranges. Bullet makers don’t like this approach because the different types of G numbers aren't comparable, so you can’t use them to rank bullet performance outside the particular coefficient type. In other words, to rank bullet ballistic performance, you can only compare G5's to G5's and G7's to G7's, but there is no relevant comparison to be made between the two. You might get a G5 BC of .4 with a match bullet that doesn’t perform as well as a VLD bullet with a G7 BC of .3. An uninformed customer may look just at .3 vs .4 and erroneously conclude the VLD won’t fly as far. As far as I know, the only software that lets you use this more advanced system is the RSI Shooting Lab software. The only problem with this is none of the manufacturers publish these more modern numbers, so you have to be able to enter a bullet's dimensions in a calculator or to have velocity measurements at two distances to enter in another calculator to derrive them. It can get complicated.

Putting in a link isn’t too tough. You can jot down the address of the web page you want to link to, but usually it is easier to open a new browser window, browse to the page, move your cursor to a blank part of the address bar and click to highlight the address, then right-click and select “Copy” from the fly-out menu. Now the address is in your clipboard, ready to paste.

Then you go back to your forum composition window. In your reply, you need to paste the link between HTML link tags. There are two ways to do this. Type a left square bracket, then the letters “url” then the right bracket. Paste your link in after the right bracket, then at the end of the link type another left bracket, then the characters “/url” and a right bracket. Text inside a pair of square brackets is an HTML tag. The first tag you typed is the “begin reading characters as part of a URL” tag. The second tag you typed is a “stop including characters in the URL” tag.

A second method makes the URL part of the opening tag, and characters following the closing bracket all become part of the link until you type the stop tag. To make a URL part of a tag, you type a left square bracket followed by “url=”, then type or paste in the link, "http://www.somepage.com”, then type the right bracket. Next put in the text you want linked, then type the same closing tag as before: square brackets around “/url”. The two methods look like this:

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/7892/123urleh8.gif

Your instructions are very clear Nick. Now for a test.







http://www.sierrabullets.com/index.cfm?section=store&page=item&stock_num=0501

There, that one works :) . And I see why the first attempt did not.

Thank you unclenick. You have taught an old dog a new trick!
I am grateful that you took the time.

roger 777
I hope that my second attempt at a link is what you were looking for.

Cheezywan


Edit: I deleted my first attempt at the second method. I was making a mess trying to correct it. Time for hot water and soap.

Cheezywan

Do they make a reloading manual for my PC?


Thank you
Here's one for your PC through your Internet browser.
http://data.hodgdon.com/main_menu.asp