I lost all my data when I took a 20 break from shooting. I had it in a Ashton Tate dBase 3 file, on a 5.25” floppy. The disk would not read. If I had kept it on a hard drive I would still have it.
I lost all my data when I took a 20 break from shooting. I had it in a Ashton Tate dBase 3 file, on a 5.25” floppy. The disk would not read. If I had kept it on a hard drive I would still have it.
NRA Training Counselor - Instructor
NRA Chief Range Safety Officer
FWC Hunter Safety Instructor
NRA Life Member
"Great genius will always encounter fierce opposition from mediocre minds." --Albert Einstein.
I lost a great deal of my data from the 70s when my basement flooded. Notebooks were under water for 3 days. All the papers that were there got destroyed.
I needed to develop new data in any case since powders and load data have changed since then.
Fortunately, all my ammunition from that time was stored in metal ammo cans with good seals. It all survived and worked perfectly.
Hi DrewP.The microfilming did`n really cost him anything as all of the equipment was his.Just cost his time.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo
People never lie so much as after a hunt,during a war,or before an election.
Otto von Bismarck
After a few days of trying I bailed on the database idea. Maybe one day in the future. I did create a simple spreadsheet. Has all the info I need plus a small area for notes. I can’t attach spreadsheets so I’m going to link them through Dropbox in case anyone wants to use them.
It’s nothing special and can be edited to suit your needs. There’s two loads per sheet of paper, I know old eyes will appreciate that. And they can be punched for a three ring binder w/out interfering w/ the data.
XLSM Format: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iq1yjfa6du...0Log.xlsm?dl=0
ODS Format: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dih0rizu8w...20Log.ods?dl=0
The margins should be set correctly. But I didn’t check for multiple entries. So you may have to play w/ them a little after entering data. There’s always little issues when converting from ODS to XLS. But I know a lot of guys don’t use Libre or Open Office so I provided both formats.
A good lesson for everyone, especially businesses. So many businesses don't keep hard copy records anymore. Major computer disruption, all the info is gone. Stores can't even make change anymore with electricity out.
The solid soft lead bullet is undoubtably the best and most satisfactory expanding bullet that has ever been designed. It invariably mushrooms perfectly, and never breaks up. With the metal base that is essential for velocities of 2000 f.s. and upwards to protect the naked base, these metal-based soft lead bullets are splendid.
John Taylor - "African Rifles and Cartridges"
Forget everything you know about loading jacketed bullets. This is a whole new ball game!
This rather reminds me of my last years in the military, whenever the subject of navigation and GPS units came up. Many of the old hands would snort and say that electronic GPS units could fail, give them a good ol' map and compass instead any day. Which lead me to observe that if they didn't think a compass should fail, they hadn't been around compasses much, and just for giggles they should go draw a dozen compasses from stores, ensure the declination was set the same on all of them, and then shoot a bearing to a distant object with each of them and note the differences they came up with. Earlier methods/techniques/tools are not foolproof simply because they've been around longer. After all, the lodestone came before the compass. And writing on stone tablets came before pencil and paper. Compass or GPS - carry a backup.
There is no right answer here - my father lost his records due to a minor house fire: the water from firefighting did what the fire never had a chance to. At that point he didn't care much about the loss of the information in the records. He was more hunter than reloader and he had his hunting loads. Now that he has died, we have his rifles but we don't have the record of his trials with those rifles.
Anyways (in my opinion), THE right answer is this: "Always have a backup of your reloading records, just like you do of anything else that's important". One copy of anything important, paper or digital, is not safe. Nor is keeping your backup copy right beside the original copy.
Paper or digital, there are many ways to lose both. For papers there is scanning/photocopying. For anything electronic there is printing to paper and backing up to other digital locations. Come to think of it, if you choose the digital route, you can have your cake and eat it too: paper copies in a logbook AND the digital copies on tablets, computers, cellphones, whatever your favorite flavour is.
My preference is digital, although I'm a Luddite in many things. I use it efficiently in some ways, inefficiently in others: I simply take a digital photo of the targets at the range to include in record keeping, but i enter chrono statistics by hand instead of simply downloading that exact same data to my tablet from the chrono. Whatever...
Like some others here have mentioned, I keep swearing that one day I'm going to put together a proper Access database for record keeping. My training on Access and VBA is distant and rudimentary, incidental training for geodatabases for topographic map making, so it would probably be far easier to simply find somebody to pay to do the job for me.
You could have your life's records of every detail on every firearm you own from the day you bought it and any receipts, sights, torque on action screws, to every load you tried in it and the results, sighting/ballistic data, results if used in competition, etc. All on your cellphone in your pocket. In fact, you'd (me anyways) would want to check yourself so you didn't end up with information overload that did nothing for you other than distract. Being in my 60's now, I better either get right on that or the shooters/reloaders relational database will be just one more thing I said I was going to do but never got around to.
Not trying to sell digital. But digital data can be protected against loss, just as anyone using paper record keeping should also be ensuring they have a copy of those records. That's the lesson for everyone here.
As you said, you could have your gun data on your phone. I have an issue with that.
It can certainly be done, but why would you want to. Phones are easy to get stolen or lose. They can be taken from you by police for no good reason.
I would not want information on my entire gun collection out there for just anyone to access if they got my phone.
There are much better places to put the data than your phone.
Other than that, you are correct.
The person I was responding to, said he could put all information about his guns including serial numbers, where he bought it, and every detail about them on his phone. I don't think I want that data on the net in any way, shape, or form.
As far as my load data, I could care less how many people see that part.
I have all my records from 1972 to present that I put on paper. I tried spreadsheets but finally settled on a database (Alpha5V4, only works on XP machines, too cheap to buy the upgrades. I keep an old desktop in XP just for my shooting and reloading and not connected to the internet.) With the database, I can sort any combination of components to recreate a load. I still put all my data on paper when I go to the range and later enter it in the database. It took me a long time to enter all those records in the database, but now I can call up by date loaded, date fired, case, bullet, powder, primer, range, muzzle velocity and any other parameter that I have recorded. I also keep targets, good or bad, so that I can match data with actual performance by stapling them to the data card I use at the range. These are kept in an expanding folder by bullet type and easy to access. Granted that I have a lot of targets that are not good, but I also found that if I try again by tweaking the load and at a different time of year, the results change. It was a lot of work, but worth it.
The first rifle and first caliber had its data recorded on 3x5 cards. That got to be quite a collection with different powders, different bullets, different lubes, etc. I also decided I wanted to keep pictures of the groups rather than drawings. So two things happened at once. Every "special" rifle got it's own range box and there was a general range box for "every day" rifles and one for the pistols. Then every rifle, every pistol got a notebook. Just the inexpensive Composition book, college ruled, that goes on sale every year at the beginning of the school term. Bought 5 last August and got change from a $5 bill. If I find a really good load it gets a Post-It Flag.
Alpha 4 Ver 5 is an old program from the 90s that was first used on the early windows platforms as Alpha 4 and upgraded to XP until about the early 2000s. It is a database program with features that fit most situations with their templates, but I made my own. It was put out by Alpha Software which is still around, but very pricey. I kept upgrading as the new versions came out, but it got to the point that I did not need the upgrades anymore.
Just found a Microsoft free program that runs XP programs on my Windows 7 Professional. Now I don't need the XP machine.
Last edited by nkpwxman; 11-22-2018 at 04:07 PM.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |