Magneto or Labradar?

[FLshooter]

Been going to the range every other day lately w/ my neighbor/shooting buddy who owns the LabRadar . Meaning I have gotten to spend some time around the LabRadar and get an opportunity to use it. I have used his labradar simultaneously with my magneto speed V3. I get the same reading with both. Rarely is there a discrepancy and if there is it’s just a few FPS. Both have pros and cons, Which we all know by now.
There are certain situations I would prefer the magneto speed V3 and Others where I would prefer the Labradar. The labradar would be nice to have at the 600 yard range with my bolt actions,where I’d like to chrono every shot. For lead development at the 100-200 yrd range ,I’d use the Magnetto speed V3.
I can see myself possibly getting a LabRadar in the future. At Midwayusa the lab radar unit is $559 and the rechargeable power unit is $24.I have an old laptop bag and plenty of tripods and stands in all sizes. So $583 gets me in.

[lazyengineer]

I've been running one for a couple years now, maybe even 3 years by now. I probably have close to 5,000 rounds if not more on it by now.

While it's a great tool, it's construction is fragile. I've had to open it up mutiple times, to take out loose screws. Of the 6 screws that hold the inside screen to the housing, 4 of them are now broken; with blown-out plastic anchor points. They spec'd a pretty cheap brittle plastic for the housing. When the last two screws go, it's basically going to be laying in there loose, with no really easy way to reattach it internally. I'll figure it out at that time, but not looking forward to it. I will say, after opening it up, a very significant portion of the cost of this thing is the fact that it's a cottage-industry product. If Amazon wanted to mass produce these things - they could probably do it for about $45 (or less).

The factory trigger on the LabRadar isn't that good. You basically have to mount the unit even with the muzzle, to get it to trigger. Which means the muzzle blast is beating the Hell out of the innards (see above). I think I'm going to try that trick with the external microphone, that's an interesting suggestion. I have some external microphones anyway for the PC - so.. FREE! Also, some people are doing some sort of rigging up of accelerameters now, and just putting that on the picatinny rail of whatever is being fired. Which is also a very cool idea.

If you put an SD card in the unit, it will record a much higher resolution of data, with like 50 distances reported, rather than just 5. Fun to play with, but not really needed. Beware of SD card annoyances, it has to be below a certain size and I think formated FAT32 (or something like that). Since this thing is pretty much 2000's (if that) era internal electronics, the act of writing 50 number entries onto an SD card is super intense and so slows down the LabRadar between shots by as much as 5+ seconds at times. Frankly, this is absurd, but that's how it is. It's faster without the card.

I've tried using my LabRadar to back-calculate ballistic coefficients. It provides sufficient data to technically be able to do that. That was a very eye-opening experience; as I was getting highly inconsistent numbers all over the place, and very rarely agreeing with factory reported BC's. I don't think this is necessarily a LabRadar failing actually, and just an artifact of the science and of ballistics out to under 100 yards. I see now why factory reported BC's and 3rd party reported BC's aren't often the same - there's a lot of noise to backing out BC's apparently.

The interface is almost primitive, and grossly non-intuitive. The BlueTooth app brings it into the 21'st century at least, but still a bit dated and very slow. Biggest problem I have there is the thing loses blue-tooth connection way too often, and you can't reconnect while it's still armed. I have their APP on three devices; one of which is a cheap Kindle Fire; which you can force their Android APK file onto. This is tidy as that way you can have a cheap $40 Kindle Fire tablet as the dedicated range controller for the LabRadar.

For power, it will eat up 6 AA's in one session. I run rechargeables, and they usually are good for 3 hours or so. I always bring an external battery pack as well, and often just run that.


To be honest - I think $600 is a lot for what these guys deliver. The made their one model, and basically walked away. Maybe the guy died; this product has all the trappings of a retiree's pet-project and then he just lost steam. And it's a very very cool pet project, I'd be increadibly proud to have released this as my version 1 in 2016. And kind of embarrased to still have this my flag-ship rendition, in 2020. Any serious company would have released a more modern and cost effective Version 2 by now. I'm surprised nobody has made a much more cost effective knock-off by now.

[FRB6.5]

Hadn't heard about the 3rd party accelerometer trigger so had to look that one up. Link to the inventor's site for those interested:
https://pietrecoiltrigger.com/

[Kswhitetails]

LE - agree on all counts. I've calc'd some BCs and been surprised by how right on Hornady's are, especially their ELD-M stuff. From what I understand, they used the LR in developing the new tips for the AMAX, so they could see what was happening down range. Maybe it was just a Doppler radar, not LR... But you're right, the LR is best in situations where you're shooting beyond 600, and not firing quick strings. I have also noticed the slight slow down in recording/ready timing when storing to the card. Your points about this being somewhat dated tech make sense, I had thought it was just my perception, or something I hadn't set up correctly.

I haven't noticed the brittle nature. Perhaps I'm more careful than some, but I'm not usually one to keep my stuff perfect. Maybe at 600 bucks, I've been more careful? I'll keep an eye out.

The accelerometer is a great idea. A bluetooth version would be amazing in application, here.

Do you shoot suppressed? I've never had a single issue with the standard mic trigger when non suppressed. I have had to play with placement close to the muzzle without the external mic, and then it wouldn't get every shot. I wonder if the trigger is a pressure sensor rather than a mic, and the suppressors take the pressure wave out of the shot?

You're probably 100% right on your technical and technology critiques. The issue I think, is the patented status of the thing.

[Klem]

This is an interesting thread; plenty of good info from everyone, thank you.

The accelerometer switch is an interesting find for suppressed shooting. Shooting suppressed on Doppler is flakey because you need to calculate the muzzle velocity back from where you think the bullet enters the beam. Having the correct muzzle velocity when adjusting loads right up to the 1,010fps benchmark requires precision.

I have the App on my phone but found it was no help. Not only did the phone keep dropping out when the phone goes to sleep (IPhone) but you are within arms reach of the Labradar's buttons when shooting anyway. The app doesn't let you share data with other devices like your computer so again, not much more than a gimmick.

I also don't like how once you've started on a new series you can't go back and add to earlier series.

Apart from that it works fine and I keep it in a Pelican case.

Here's what I use;

1. Pen in the groove to aim it.
   
2. Li-ion rechargeable that lasts several sessions without recharging. I set the sleep-mode limits (screen and armed) to maximums when there's plenty of power available. You can then take your time without worrying it's going to suddenly stop sensing at the critical moment.
   
3. The lid of my case tumbler plus a screw turns it into a bench stand. The concave lid helps it sits stable on the bench.
   

I saw someone on Arf.com takes his whole tumbler to the range and mounts the Labradar on top. Apparently the thread on his tumbler stem fits the radar (standard tripod thread 1/4x20). Innovative idea but taking the whole tumbler to the range (for the sake of buying a 1/4*20 screw) is unnecessary. Just the lid works fine, plus the barrel is the same level as the microphone.

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[FRB6.5]

Another tip for Android users. If you suddenly noticed an inability or great difficulty connecting to your LabRadar try lowering the AVRCP version under Bluetooth settings. You do have to enable Developer Options to do this but it is usually simple.

There was a rash of reports of sudden BT connection issues for many different types of devices and various forum reports suggested lowering the profile (I went from 1.4 to 1.3 on my cheapo tablet).

A guide on how to enable Developer Options for Android 9:
https://wccftech.com/how-to-enable-andro...-tutorial/

[centerfire]

Pietman kinetic trigger is attached to the left side of the rifle.