Reloading software.

[JeffinNZ]

Team.

How good are the software packages for predicting INTERNAL ballistics? "Load from a disc" etc.

Is there any great value in having them and do they lend themselves towards cast bullet shooters who tend to use faster than usual powders?

[dromia]

I'm a big fan of Quickload, at the end of the day its like all these programmes it should be treated with a healthy respect and its predictions seen as approximate.

That said it has worked out to be surprisingly consistent, if you are meticulous in inputting the required data then it works well.

I find that with cast boolits in military rifles using very fast powders e.g. 5 gns of VV N310 in 303s it is consistently over predicting the velocity by around 200fps which is a lot in a 900-1000 fps load.

I could twek this within QL by adjusting the BA of the powder as I think it is perfoming differently from speccy in this low case fill situation.

As you work through the powder burning rates it starts getting pretty spot on from fast rifle powders at 1700 fps upwards.

It has a reasonable selection of Lyman and Lee bullets which can be used as starting points for most cast boolits.

It gives a wide range of readings and there is a demo version on the NECOS web site.

I use it a lot and have found it well worth the outlay, however like all of them it is no substitute for safe reloading practices.

For me now it is an indispensible tool for helping me develop loads and refine powder selection.

[Cap'n Morgan]

+1 what Dromia says.

Hope I'm not coming across as a shill, but..:

Quickload takes the guessing out of reloading!

It can be a little overwhelming the first few times you use it, but once you become familiar with the program you can't understand how you managed to live without it.

It has too many features to list here, but one of the smart ones is the ability to search the powder database for suitable powders, based on your preference - for example, max pressure and a minimum case filling ratio of 60%.

You'll have to tweak the program slightly when working with cast boolits. Especially the "Shot Start Pressure" which is significantly lower than for jacketed bullets. Also, if you are using medium to slow powders in large volume cases with too much room to spare, you can't always rely on the burn rate to match the predicted value. Of course, this is not the fault of Quickload, but more like a wrong choice of powder to begin with. As a rule of thumb I prefer the "amount of propellant burned", when the bullet leaves the muzzle, to be 90% or better.

Of course, you can add and edit your own bullet, cartridge and gun files. Another nice feature is the included external ballistic program "QuickTARGET" which can import the last set of values from Quickload directly.

[BD]

Another vote for Quickload, although I'm pretty new at it. I'm still learning how to "tweak" it for the surplus powders. And there are some areas where the particular lot of canister powder used to build the program does not match my experience with that powder. A "for instance": Quickload shows a significant difference in pressure and velocity between IMR 4831 and H 4831 in the 6.5x55. I have some significant comparison data between the two 4831s in the 6.5x55 developed when I was calibrating WC852(s) for that cartridge, including some actual pressure data. All of my data shows these two powders in that cartridge to be within a grain of each other while Quickload shows the IMR loads way higher.

All in all a very useful tool which allows you to sort through a lot of possible combinations pretty quickly an form an idea of what is going to work. Anybody know if you can input your actual velocity data to push back against the pressure calculation?

Any rule of thumb for the meniscus when measuring case capacity in grains of water?

BD

[JeffinNZ]

Thanks guys.

I checked out the price though and it will cost me nearly double that in NZD unfortunately which is a bridge too far right now.