Thread: LabRadar

Many using the new Labradar - how are they finding it - any troubles to be concerned about.
Just seen one at Serious Shooters in jafaland for under $995 early in the week thinking about moving up from my magnetospeed

A mate has just bought one, hopefully have a play with it next week

They are the shizzle.

Accurate and easy to use. Get the airgun trigger if you have a suppressor and a $20 usb battery pack from TM 5V 1 A.

The SD card feature is also very good, heaps of data and you could work out BC on the small stuff like 22lr with the track reports...

Had mine out twice. Mostly no issues thus far. Only one was a false trigger from another shooter, but a sensitivity change fixed that.
The data stored on the SD card is a great feature, and the simplicity of it's use is great.

It successfully tracked a 6.5mm boat tail projectile to 85 meters for every shot in a 6 shot string, and allowed me to verify the BC of the bullet. I'll have to get out the Accubond LR projectiles and get their real BC.

Having had the Labradar out for the first time yesterday I thought I’d also post a few comments on some aspects of the Labradar set-up, use, and results - a part review and hopefully also a part exchange of ideas with forum members who also have one.

Set-up

Shooting was with a 6.5x47 using Berger 140gr Target Hybrids that I had set aside for test purposes such as this. With these bullets the Labradar has a 5mm diameter tail surface to work off. Shooting comprised 8 strings of 6 shots each with powder charge being incremented in 0.3gr steps.

I used Labradar’s orange stand. As an alternative to trying to find a suitable short tripod this is worth the extra NZ$70 IMO as it comes with a solid metal ball head with quick-release plate, and by design allows for placing the chronograph in what the manufacturer feels to be good position for reliable triggering. The only minor gripe I have over this mounting option is that the hole drilled in the centre of the plate to mount the adjustable head has been drilled oversized when it could just have easily been the correct diameter for a more secure attachment.

In expectation of possible problems with aiming the radar beam (that radiates out normal to the rear face) I glued a short length of 4mm brass tube into the aiming V-slot on the top of the housing, lined the target up through the tube, and just left it without further adjustments.

The rifle runs a T2 brake. I had the Labradar positioned in close to the barrel and behind the blast zone – far enough back to be about level with the front of the scope. In this position the barrel didn’t appear to interfere with the radar’s operation. There was also the advantage of then being able to easily reach the control buttons when shooting prone. That said the Labradar can be set to remain armed and ready to record for up to 5 minutes between shots – so in reality there is probably no reason to need to touch it during a string.

I had the Labradar set up for audio triggering with a trigger level left at the default setting of 1 (most sensitive), and the unit triggered reliably for all shots, so at the moment I’m not sure what the online concerns have been about using the Labradar with braked barrels. The only disadvantage I can see is that with this offset from the muzzle all the velocity readings will be at distances out by half a metres or so. Next trip out I’ll try having the unit level with the muzzle and so forward of the brake’s exhaust and see if the triggering remains as reliable. I didn’t try the Doppler triggering feature.

6x AA NiMH rechargeables were fitted as an alternative to the 5V USB power packs that other forum members have been using. At the rated 800mA current consumption I expected 3 hours of service, and that is what I got.

For the first trip out a SD card wasn’t fitted. This was a mistake. Though there appears ample internal storage capacity without a card, the data can’t be accessed for .csv download from the internal memory. On returning home I then had to scroll through the shot history and manually copy the velocity figures into a spreadsheet.

Menu settings

Intuitive, and nicely done via the buttons. The user manual is good too.

The Labradar allows the user to set 5 distances at which velocity measurements will be taken and recorded for each shot. The software then uses these figures to extrapolate back to estimate the muzzle velocity. Having gathered that a 100m reading would be asking a bit much from the radar for 6.5mm boattail bullets, I set the distances for velocity measurement to be taken at 10metres, 20m, 40m, 60m, and 80metres.

The Labradar recorded ALL velocities at 10, 20 and 40 metres. It missed taking readings for 9 out of 48 shots at 80 metres, and readings at both 60 and 80 metres for a further 2 shots. As I didn’t tinker with the aiming once set I can’t tell whether this could have been improved upon by refining the orientation of the unit, or if this is simply representative performance for this bullet.

Once uploaded into a spreadsheet the velocity data for each shot was graphed to look for measuring anomalies. For 10metres through to 40 metres the data closely approximated a straight line surprisingly well for all 48 shots (over a 30 metre distance any curvature in the velocity decay is going to be next to impossible to pick up). At 60metres - and more so for 80metres - there is some deviation in some of the shots indicating that the quality of the measurements does deteriorate. I suspect there is a cut-off point set in software based around the received SNR where potentially inaccurate readings are not displayed. The figures that were displayed did not deviate from the figure predicted by the trendline set up from the shorter-distance measurements by more than 5-6 ft/sec. Regardless the extrapolation to estimate the muzzle velocity will be heavily weighted on the velocity measurements at the shorter distances, and these all appeared solid. In summary I didn’t observe any results that would raise questions about the claimed 0.1% accuracy.

Calculating BC from the data

The idea here is that the decay in velocity over the five distances at which measurements are taken can be compared against those predicted using a trajectory simulator for the same muzzle velocity while the ballistic coefficient is tweaked until the downrange velocities all match. The question was whether the data from the Labradar was going to be consistent enough to get a sufficient quality of match to result in usable corrections to published BCs that could be applied at long range.

For bullets where the G7 BC=0.3 and at a MV of 2800 ft/sec, an error of 1ft/sec in the measured velocity at 80 metres from the Labradar will throw the estimated G7 BC out by roughly 0.002, this being the precision I was hoping could be achieved.

Individual shot measurement error can be removed by averaging recorded velocities over as many shots as possible with a given bullet - regardless of whether these are all the same load and MV. I averaged the available velocity readings for all 48 shots in the 8 strings and ended up with an average muzzle velocity of 2837.3 ft/sec. Similarly the velocities measured by the Labradar at distances of 10m, 20m, 40m, 60m, and 80metres were also all averaged. The result was a smoothed decay in average bullet velocity that was then compared to a JBM online trajectory simulation set up with the same conditions under which the chronograph was used and starting with the same muzzle velocity.

The published G7 BC for the Target Hybrid is 0.311. With BC=0.303 loaded into the JBM simulator all the predicted downrange velocities ran high when compared to the averaged Labradar velocities. With the BC lowered to 0.300 they all swung lower than the Labradar figures, leaving 0.302 as the estimated G7 BC and known it would seem pretty damned precisely .

Overall

Has absolutely met my expectations so far. It has the obvious advantages over the alternatives - easily portable, no screens to set-up, no POI changes etc. plus is able to provide some pretty interesting downloadable data. I need to cross-check it against some drop data before pronouncing on the overall accuracy but I haven’t seen anything that would raise concerns so far.

@Puffin
Great review

Originally Posted by WallyR

@Puffin
Great review

+1 Better than I could have done.
Have used mine heaps while I was home and it was apart from one fuckup of my own, perfect. I forgot to change from rifle to handgun on the speed. And had a wee crowd giving me shut as to what an expensive box it was until I sorted my mistake


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Thanks guys been a great help

so you recommend a airgun trigger for when using a suppressor, so it wouldn't work without.

Originally Posted by 300MAG

Thanks guys been a great help

so you recommend a airgun trigger for when using a suppressor, so it wouldn't work without.

No. Mine works fine without one but the airgun trigger will aid where you can place the unit in relation to your position.

I have decided to get one anyway even tho the unit has worked perfectly without it when using suppressors on centerfires.



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I'm very interested in how local shooters have got on with estimating ballistic coefficients from Labradar data. Please let us know how successful this has been for you with some details! There are already quite a number of reports online from overseas on this. The results of most have a large amount of uncertainty in the estimated BC - often too much to provide a useful refinement to the published figures for long range use when the number of shots being used to make these estimations has been small.

This report is different:

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1608/1608.06500.pdf

There is some information for Labradar users on how the equipment works and detail on the observed increasing error with distance. The improvement with increasing shot sample size for estimating BC is quantified.

For interested buyers:

https://buymylabradar.com/products/labradar

Thanks Mrs Google

Note: US$ price

Had mine out a few times now. I didnt get the external trigger and all suppressed rifles functioned well apart 2 shots thats triggered but failed to read from the 85gr tsx at 3400fps. May have been my set up. The braked 338 took a little trial and error to get right, the first couple of shots turned the labradar off. Moving it back 250mm ish and away a bit and it was fine. The eneloop pro AA batts clocked up 150 shots and were still showing good life but were flat when i checked this morning. It may have been bumped on through the bag?. Its a perfect fit in an old laptop bag I had here with room in the top pocket for the plate, spare batts etc.
Great bit of gear.

With all these flash labradar being brought hopefully a cheap magneto speed will come up for sale soon

Originally Posted by winaa

With all these flash labradar being brought hopefully a cheap magneto speed will come up for sale soon

May as well fork out the little bit of difference (new) for the labradar imo.
Magneto speed is a great bit of kit but limited in what it can do

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How are these things meant to be set up? They used one at the chrono station for the ipsc nationals and the readings on the open guns were all over the fucking show! By as much as 200 fps. There are a few unhappy shooters who have been declared as shooting minor power factor now because of one or 2 realy erratic readings.