Finally got my new LabRadar out to the range. I mostly shoot at a fairly busy range, but had it to myself for the first hour this morning. Shot three different rifles - .25/06, .223 Rem and a .17 HMR. The HMR was mostly to see if the LabRadar would pick up the .17 cal bullets and would reliably trigger on the softer muzzle blast of the rimfire.
A few thoughts on my first experience - pretty much echoes many of the comments already made here on 24HCF and other places people have given reports.
- Very easy to set up - especially compared to my Shooting Chrony and tripod - a real pain at this range because of the number of people shooting
- Bit of a learning curve to navigate the menu - especially on playing back shots, but got over it quickly
- Forgot more than once to hit the "arm" button - yes, I'm a doofus!
- The LabRadar caught all of the .25/06 (total of 20 rounds); most of the .223 Remington and most of the .17HMR. Played with the sensitivity settings a little early in the process - had it at the midpoint due to concerns about interference from adjacent benches. Setting it back to the most sensitive setting (affects the internal microphone to pick up the muzzle blast) and putting the .17 HMR muzzle even with the LabRadar mostly fixed missing .17 HMR shots. The .223 Rem seemed to do better with the LabRadar about four inches behind the muzzle and once I figured that out (and did I mention I forgot to hit the arm button a time or two) it was pretty much on.
- "Tracking" distance for the .223 and .17HMR were only reliably in the 40 to 60 yard range. The .25/06 was a little better at mostly 80 yards with several reading out to 100. I set the default read distances as 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 yards. This range has a large wood baffle about ten feet in front of the benches to keep any round fired from an elevated barrel from leaving the range which I think may have affected the radar beam. Next time I'll try to get a little better centered between the vertical posts, but nothing I can do about the horizontal. In the end, I'm mostly concerned about the muzzle velocity. I never had any downrange information before and not really sure how the downrange info will help me (yet)!
Don't know about accuracy - both the .25/06 and .223 Rem loads have never been run over my old chronograph. But, the .17 HMR numbers were consistent with a bunch of readings done a few years ago. Certainly the lot to lot variance in the factory rimfire ammo comes in to play, but the overall numbers were pretty close.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the inaugural run - sure better than setting up the Shooting Chrony.
