Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters the new Garmin chronograph / Tester

i wanna get a new Garmin chronograph but i also want someone with a lot of experience with shooting different size calibers and cartridges has used plenty chronographs that would give us a great honest answers after using one . so how many looneys would be interested in sending this person each $20.00 or more for this person to test a new Garmin chronograph for us ? this person from out west gets to keep our money and the chronograph . i am leary just to buy another chronograph but this Garmin might be the better easier ticket . who thinks this would be a good way to know the truth ? thank you Pete53

They are on backorder from everyone............compose yourself and wait like the rest of us without knee jerk reactions

i have a way of getting one faster than the public can , so i want an honest answer no its not a knee jerk reaction i own 3 different brand chronographs now all take to much time to set-up . but in the winter i have plenty time to shoot on my rifle range and a easy Chronograph would help up here in the north country when its cold and nasty 1/2 the year.

Get it. Mail it to MD. Let him wear it out, then he'll write about it.

comment to my thought i need others too ?

There's literally thousands of reviews out there beyond the Fire, all positive, from BB guns on up, live a little.

Thinking about selling my Magneto Speed setup and getting one, but I don’t need donations and don’t do reviews.

I've got mine - ordered a day or two after the announcement. I've only shot over it twice with S&W .40 and 10mm. It didn't miss a shot and is blindly easy to set up and use.

As others have said, there are tons of reviews from guys how have shot extensively over it.

My Lab Radar has already found a new home and won't miss it a bit. If you got the cash and need a chrono, I can't imagine buying anything else.

I cannot even begin to describe how pleased I am that I no longer have to shoot over a Shooting Chrony.

Worth every single penny spent and every second waiting.

Which review can’t you read or don’t believe?

Back when Oehler 35P was all the rage, I watched a feller spend 25 minutes setting his up his new Oehler chronograph at the range. I had to watch because it took him 25 agonizing minutes.

Unfortunately, he apparently looked through his scope turned up to Mach 10 magnification failing to consider the flightpath of his bullet. Whatever caliber he was shooting ploughed through all three skyscreens. Seemed like good penetration to me but unclear on the velocity.

Took a lot of self-control not to comment. I let him cuss and stamp around until he collected what was left and departed.

I don't miss the Oehler days.

Ahh, the Oehler 35P, shame mine took a dump after 12 years and the real shame is that it got repaired for free. Be interesting to see if Garmin will do that after 1 year.

I don't miss the Oehler days. It is so windy in my area that it was difficult to keep the sky screens from blowing over. As a result, I could only chronograph a few days a year and had many wasted trips to the range.

I have been looking at reviews of the Garmin and have yet to see anyone mention the one thing that gives me concerns. I am not a fan of phone apps generally (especially unique proprietary ones) or using my phone as a long term data storage device. I keep a SanDisk memory card in my Labradar that has saved every string I have fired. All I need to do is jot down the gun, string number and load info. I can pull the card from the Labradar at any time and download the data to my computer in a CSV format.

Can any of you early Garmin adopters tell me if the unit has built in memory and/or a means of saving the data to a computer in a commonly recognized format?

Thanks.

Lots of retards on rifle ranges.

I agree about retards at rifle ranges but have never used my Oehler with only 2 skyscreens
what is the reason ????????

That is an Ohler 33 which only has 2 screens

John is correct .
Ohler model 33 from 1986.
Only two screens.
In the picture they are 10 feet apart .
The book says, as I remember,
Accuracy doubles from a 5 foot to 10 foot screen spacing.
That's how I used it for years.
Service and parts are still available..

Sight mark Lazer.
30 bucks.


dave

If anybody reads the directions from Ken Oehler on how to set up a 35 (or 33) it doesn't take more than at most 5 minutes.

I still have my 35P, mostly as a check for any new chronograph I have to check out--but also because they're almost as hard to sell as Labradars are going to be....

I use a stopwatch

I put it in my off trigger hand and punch to start when I pull the trigger then when I see the bullet slice through the paper I punch it to stop.

A few quick equations on my abacus and I can derive fps and BC

A half dozen shots later and I've determined SD

Long ago and faraway I used to sight-in precisely at 100 yards, then shoot the rifle at longer ranges. Sometimes I'd bother to compare the results with the primitive trajectory charts in the back of just about all loading manuals back then, and come up with an approximate muzzle velocity.

Then in 1989 I bought my first chronograph, and used it to figure trajectories using the primitive tables published in the back of most loading manuals back then. That didn't work as closely as many people thought it would, partly because the tables were based on "standard atmospheric conditions," 59 degrees F. at sea level.

Also discovered that most handloaders over-estimated the velocities of their handloads, probably due to picking the highest out of all the manuals then available. Found this out because my chronograph was the first to appear on the local range, and more than a few people asked if they could take a few shots over its light-screens. Often they cussed it out, saying the numbers couldn't be right--but they proved to be just as accurate as any of the several chronographs I've owned since.

An abacus would probably be more accurate than those old trajectory tables....