Testing Times

Peter Yeats reveals the plus points of buying your own chronograph

- Peter Yeats

We’ve all heard it, “I’m not buying one of those! I’ll only need it once in a blue moon!” and I’d usually be the one saying it, but sometimes it’s necessary to have a piece of kit that seems almost pointless because the need for what it can do will be so infrequent and irregular. When it’s truly needed, though, it’s absolutely VITAL, and nothing else will do. A chronograph is one example, and you might find yourself using one more often than you think.

The purpose of a chronograph is to measure velocity accurately, essential to shooters because it allows us to know, very precisely, the performance of our gun and pellet combinations. Its most basic function is to provide data on the power output of our kit, keeping us on the legal side of 12 ft.lbs. if we’re not on an FAC ticket. For this alone, given the reasonable cost of reputable chronographs, every shooter should consider buying one, or at very least, joining a club providing shared access, or buying one jointly with a shooting buddy.

WHICH MODEL?

Chronographs come in a variety of shapes and sizes, materials, portability and costs. Some are designed specifically for airguns and air-soft guns, whilst others are designed for use by archers right up to very high velocity firearms, and are used in the measurement of competition guns. Many are designed to be portable and some are clearly intended for fixed locations, like the San Pro series, favoured by law enforcement authorities. All operate on the same principle of measuring the time taken for a projectile to pass between two sensors, extrapolating from that the projectile’s velocity.