centerfire Wrote:The Satterlee method isn't intended to find the tightest group but to identify velocity nodes in the least amount of rounds possible. Your group size is irrelevant. Your spreadsheets still invalidate the process but your commentary on the group size is more of a sidebar. The next step should be finding the optimal seating depth to tighten the group assuming you found a velocity node. Based on your spreadsheet I'd probably change primers or powder because the SD's are high and loads .3gr above and below don't suggest a velocity plateau.
Centrefire,
Well, at least we agree that Satterlee does not work in all situations.
And if you want to compound the validation by suggesting it is invalid because the OAL is not being tested and lots of different powders are not being tested then again, how will you ever know that the lowest SD/velocity spread produces the best results at 1K unless you test all of these other permutations across all other loads to produce the tightest groups at 1K?
Are you saying that because my SD's were not low enough that this somehow confounds Satterlee, and that Satterlee only works with single digit SD's? Surely, as long as all variables across all loads are equal that shouldn't matter. Yes, I could now tinker with powder and primers to tighten the SD's but how much of doing this is enough to turn Satterlee into a good predictor of best groups at long range? You can tighten SD's by tinkering with primer/powders but how does that guarantee Satterlee is now a better predictor of long range accuracy than doing the same tinkering and seeing the effects on a target at 100?
Tightest groups is not a sidebar, this is what you are trying to achieve at 1K, to give your ability to drive this around the target the best chance of winning. Finding the tightest velocity nodes with the lowest round count at the muzzle is not the aim of the exercise, it is the mediating variable to finding the tightest groups at long range.
As shooters we could start a discipline where we shoot across chronographs into the butts without targets and the winner is the one with tightest velocity spread. But that's not what Satterlee is currently used for. It is used to predict results on a target. Results on targets are measured in group sizes and our ability to place those groups on an aiming mark; Precision and Accuracy.