Originally Posted by ChrisF
To address the statistical concerns, the assumption in using a Audette test is your rifle has to be accurate enough to give you high confidence that the elevation differences are load related and not random error (rifle with poor accuracy). A poorly shooting rifle gives too much random noise to use an Audette test.
I’m not convinced that’s a realistic assumption. Shooting groups at 100 yards with all load increments where trajectory differences are negligible would reveal that the precision of the various increments is often inconsistent enough so as to be comparable with the dispersion in the trajectory between increments at longer distance. There is little doubt that the theory of faster bullets exiting the barrel lower in the arc than slower bullets is sound, but in reality all things that have inherent non-deterministic behaviour are at the mercy of statistical uncertainty. The ability to determine a weak “signal” from the noise requires an extremely low level of noise.

For the record, I have experimented with the Audette method at 100 meters out to 600 meters in the past, using rifles that shot in the 2s and 3s.