I don't know if the LED-lighted sunscreens from Caldwell's kit would help in low light, late afternoon/early evening outdoor lighting or not. I think that's mostly for indoor shooting. I could NOT get it to read a shot from my BB gun in that kinda lighting at home after I first unboxed it. But it does work from the late summer hours of, say, 9 a.m. to 6:30~ish p.m. every day since, using the sun screens ya git. One day I'll try taping my little Harbor Freight LED flashlights to the sunscreens I have to see what happens in those crummy light situations.I don't like dealing with the chronograph at the local range. It has to be set up with as perfect of pitch, roll, and yaw as you can get. Parallel to the bullets path, square to the muzzle, and as level left-to-right as you can get it. And at the right distance and height from the muzzle, so any muzzle blast won't rattle the thing, and at the right height for the bullet to pass through, hitting "the sweet spot" over the sensors to record shots, but not hitting the chrono itself. I did punch it once with my BB gun at around 550 fps, and now have a little shallow divot in the plastic screen protector.
Wouldn't be that lucky with, say, my .22 or bigger guns. Anyway, getting the goofy thing set up while the range is temporarily cold, and folks are wanting to return to shooting, is a pain to me. It's probably easier to live with at a home range, or times when you have your shooting area all to yourself, as far as setup is concerned.And it comes with a cord to hook up to a phone, tablet, or laptop. You can download a free app, and it will save groups & calculate all the nerdy facts for ya. I could not get it to come to speaking terms with my iPhone mini13. I tried 2 different adapters for the phone-to-cord connection (one directly from Apple, on Caldwell's recommendation), and neither worked. It plugs directly into and does work with my old Android Motorola phone, so now that phone goes to the range with the chronograph. When I show up to shoot, it looks like I'm gonna have a yard sale at the range.
If you only use it to read the velocities on the screen, record the numbers with pencil and paper, and punch the values into an online ballistic progroam of some sort, you can get the same sorta facts and nerd stuff that the app does, if you're into that sorta stuff. You won't have to deal with connectivity issues this way.I have had issues with it not reading shots sometimes, but almost always when the light was marginal or not good for whatever reason. Yesterday, it never missed a beat. These things can be frustrating as hell when they don't work right, and kinda cool at times when they do work as they should. Be prepared for a slight learning curve with these types of tripod mounted sensor reading shot timer/computer gizzies. Use a BB gun or .22 to learn with, as the ammo is cheaper, or with the BB gun, it might survive a direct hit. A Nerf gun would likely be best of all, I guess.
I sent a few of my reloads through, and it didn't record them on my first trip to the range with it a coupla weeks ago. Same for factory loads, on that day. That kinda pi$$ed me off a tiny bit.I'm slowly building trust in the velocity readings I'm getting. My BB gun is CO2 powered. As shots go on and the compressed gas gets used up, it progressively shows slower velocity readings. It's pretty much good for 60 shots before it needs more gas. And this shows on the chronograph readings. You see a gradual recuction of FPS readings in the numbers as you keep shooting, followed by an increase in velocity when I replace the cylinders. This is as it should be. For my shooting yesterday with my reloads for my 30-30, a 4-shot group showed an average velocity of 2400 FPS. It showed an average for 3 shots with my son's .270 Savage 110 of 2975 fps using green & yellow box Remington factory loads. Which again, is probbly as it should be. The values for his .270 Winchester are pretty much what most folks actually get with their rifles for these factory rounds. I was just happy it recorded his velocities later in the afternoon, and showed expected numbers.
Be interested in others' experiences and problem solving.
I know if things are "right", it picks up BBs, pellets, and .22 projectiles.
Which is kinda why I chose the Caldwell. The cost was only $83 shipped from Amazon. Amazon does have cheaper copies/no-name models, and I've shot thru one at my gun club. A friend let me put 3 or 4 shots through his, and it worked fine. But not 15 minutes later, it died on him while he was shooting through it. We both hoped it was simply needing a fresh battery, but I've yet to find out from him if it's still working or not.
Like the LED lights of some type attached to the sun shades I kinda mentioned above.
