Originally Posted by Jordan Smith
Originally Posted by rcamuglia
Originally Posted by ChrisF
The intersection of "Audette Testing" for load development and statistics is ironic for me. I'm a Creighton Audette fan and chased down whatever of his writings I could find; Rifleman, Precision Shooting etc.

Audette was very well versed in Statistics and wrote an article entitled "It Ain't Necessarily So" where he debunked folks making pronouncements of accuracy based on single groups or 3 shot groups etc. The irony is that he used and wrote about load testing shooting single shots at escalating charge weights (he called it the "20 shot method"). And thought nothing of the statistics of if as others are calling out here. The method just flat out worked for him to find a load that had match winning accuracy.

For those that don't know much about Audette, he was a high level Highpower Competitor, gunsmith, and accuracy critical thinker. He was the Harold Vaughn of his generation (if you haven't heard of Harold Vaughn, that 's a discussion for another time).

Others such as Dan Newberry decided Audette needed to bulk up his statistics by shooting 3 shots at each charge weight in a "round robin" fashion. (google OCW or Optimal Charge Weight to read more). Chris Long put his Engineer's stamp on Newberry's theory with his OBT (Optimal Barrel Time) theory. I personally think they missed the point. The 20 shot method is a great shortcut to getting to an accurate load that is conditions, temperature and charge weight resilient. It wasn't meant to withstand statistical analysis.

Closer to the topic raised by the video; Randolph Constantine (he was an actual bona fide Rocket Scientist) decided he would use a chrono at 100 yards in his version of Audette Load Development and called his twist "Incremental Load Development". I shook my head when I read his article in Precision Shooting for much the same reasons as that video called out. Flat spots in a charge/velocity curve didn't match up to 300 or 600 yard accuracy on paper for me.


Nice to see someone on the Long Range Forum who is familiar with the method and Long Range Load Development. Not many are, as you can see.


Originally Posted by ChrisF
Quote
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.
Yes, the signal gets lost in the noise as they say…hence as described by Audette, he shot at 300 yards to boost the signal and shot prone off a front bag, with a scope (even though the end use was irons for competition), during the early morning when the wind was calmest to reduce the noise.

Curious what the results of your testing was like?



I doubt you’ll get any useful feedback
Fortunately for me, the Audette method isn’t the only way to successfully develop a LR load. My methods have done well enough to enable me to place on the podium at multiple precision rifle competitions with stages from 1000-2000 yards.

As I said, I experimented with the Audette method a few times, and didn’t have consistent enough results to adopt the method in general. If others have success with it, great. Whatever works.


Exactly. Whatever works.

For me and the method I’ve refined, the Audette finds the best long range load with minimal vertical the fastest and saves barrel life for the real thing

Originally Posted by Bristoe
The people wringing their hands over Trump's rhetoric don't know what time it is in America.