I did take it for a test drive Friday afternoon and a good workout Saturday morning. This is my first chrony. My pics to follow (maybe tomorrow) that show it installed on a RH and a BH.
Here's what I got.
From the MagnetoSpeed website:
First off, this chrony has no downrange sensors. It has a sensor that straps onto the barrel.
From the MagnetoSpeed website:
They call it the Bayo Unit (looks kinda like a bayonet). The flat part has two sensors in it. One near the very tip and one near the dished out section. In between is a bar magnet (strong enough to hold a steel cleaning rod). The sensors detect disturbances in the magnetic field.
I strapped it to the Redhawk and test fired 2 rounds of 44 Mag Friday afternoon. The Bayo came loose both times. The tiedown strap was misrouted through the buckle and I learned that the buckle needs to be snugged up as close to the strap slot in the Bayo as the strap can get it. Pics tomorrow will illustrate what I am talking about. I played with it some more Friday evening and figured out what to do to secure it. I also test fit it to my 5.5 inch Blackhawk. I removed the ERH on the BH.
The computer is small, about the size of a billfold. It runs off 4 x AAA batteries. It is connected to the Bayo by a simple audio cable with 1/8" jacks on each end. You get 2 cables, one of which is a retractable sort. A 6' cable headphone cable is $6 at Radio Shack. Plugging the cable into the computer turns it on. Data is saved onto a micro SD card. You get a full sized SD card adapter. The display is LCD and it has a backlight. You can turn that off or on. The display has enough pixels to show most of the string stats and the last 3 (I think) shots. You have to pick between SD or ES to be displayed.
There are presets for bullet type and you can define a custom setup. For cast, I used a sensor sensitivity of 6 (out of 15 steps, 1 being most sensitive). That seemed to work just fine. Presets are Copper jacket/lead core, copper jacket/steel core, and lead slug.
Saturday: I started with the RH. I needed to check the cable connector, Bayo position and strap tension after each round. A couple of times, recoil made the Bayo end of the cable come out, but there was only one time when I shot shot data because of that. I will look into finding a right-angle connector and duct tape in place.
I discovered the RH barrel is slightly tapered. When I mount the Bayo, I use a cleaning rod to make sure the sensor deck is parallel to the bore and out of the bullet path. With the RH, the tip hit the rod. I used some rubber electical splicing tape to make a shim (a single layer of tape was enough) at the muzzle end of the v-block on the Bayo. The BH did not need shimming. I used the thin v-block for all guns. They provide a thick v-block for thin-walled barrels. The sensors need to be close to the bullet.
After shooting several loads in the RH and BH, Donaldjr1969 graciously lent me his M500 S&W and 5 rounds each of 2 different loadings. His is the 8 3/4" barrel with full lug and comp. I tried mounting the Bayo with the v-block under the lug. I felt that was too far from the bullet path, so I mounted the Bayo at 9 o'clock. I selected Copper jacket/lead core as the bullet setup. No data on first shot, likely because of the barrel wall thickness. I did a custom setup with sensitivity 7. Got data then.
The data saved to a single csv file and I opened it right up in Excel. It took me about two minutes from gun in case and chrony in box to being set up for shooting. No cease fire needed. I am real happy.
Next trip, I will try it on my Rossi M92. This unit won't work on a semi-automatic pistol where the slide encloses the barrel. I have not tried it, but the manufacturer says it won't pick up air gun pellets. I will try it with my .22 cal air rifle anyways, just because.
