Ballistic Gel & Chronograph at 100+ yds ever been done?

I have never had hands on with ballistics gel, but I do have a chronograph. I have thought about putting it right at the target, 100 yards away. Maybe next time I shoot rifles I’ll try it, only after knowing quite well where to place it to avoid shooting it.

Accurate expansion data can be obtained by down-loading cartridges so that impact velocity into the gel is at the same velocity that it would be at range.

slicksleeve said:

I have never had hands on with ballistics gel, but I do have a chronograph. I have thought about putting it right at the target, 100 yards away. Maybe next time I shoot rifles I’ll try it, only after knowing quite well where to place it to avoid shooting it.

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I do this and run my magspeed on my barrel. It helps to have someone with you when setting up the chrono at range tho.

I dont have any balistics gel, tho ive made some substitutes with agar...never tried both tho.

ColoradoMinuteMan said:

Accurate expansion data can be obtained by down-loading cartridges so that impact velocity into the gel is at the same velocity that it would be at range.

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Ive read that this dosent produce the same results due to spin, and other variables....again never tried it, so this is simply what ive read.

I have done both but not at the same time. I’ve shot through my chronograph at 200 to get ballistic coefficients for a couple bullets where none was listed. I have also shot water jugs at 10 to 200 yards with various cartridges to recover the bullets.

It’s interesting to see how a certain bullet expands at different velocities but setting the chronograph out at long range is pointless unless you don’t believe in ballistic calculators.

Lab Radar will give you the velocity and range for the bullet from very close to the muzzle till it looses signal down range in 2 milli-second intervals. Depending on caliber it can track the bullet 60-130 yards down range. Its range is reliant on how good of a signal is reflected off the back of the bullet so more area more range.

I dabbled in ballistic gel experiments a few years back. I don’t want to discourage anyone, but know what you’re in for if you give it a try.

1. It’s expensive regardless of whether you go with organic gelatin or the synthetic blocks. Even a 6x6x12 inch block will eat a lot of gel and you’ll want a bigger block than that for a rifle test.

2. It’s messy. With organic gel, you’ll want to hit spills with winded right away. It seems to break up protein chains and keep it from setting up. Not sure about the synthetic gel, but it doesn’t look like something that would be fun to get out of a carpet.

3. Finding a place to set up and shoot the blocks can be tricky. If you have private land to shoot on, awesome. Most public ranges won’t appreciate the amount of time it will take you to set up all your gear, shoot one shot, and then reset.

4. Dead centering the 6x6 face of the block at 100 or more yards under outdoor shooting conditions can be harder than you’d think. But most people are a better shot than me.

5. Everyone’s gonna hate you. You’re going to spend a ton of time money and effort to conduct your tests, so naturally you’ll want share the results with your favorite online gun communities. They’ll find it really cool, right? Haha, nope! If you didn’t calibrate your block, you’ll never hear the end of it. You can explain til you’re blue in the face that your tests are comparitive and were never meant to be an FBI level test, and it won’t matter. If you didn’t calibrate, you’re a walking trash fire of a human being. And God help you if your results conflict with anyone’s preconceived notions about their favorite round. No one likes any information that conflicts with their existing worldview and this goes triple for many gun people. Just look at the comments section of any gel test meant to address the concepts of birdshot for self defense or the .223 for deer.

That said, shooting the gel blocks can be a lot of fun when time, money and space aren’t huge obstacles. Good luck.

Most of the bullet manufacture do not do long range terminal effectiveness testing. They do lot of ballistic testings at long range,. They have fancy high power radars that let them track bullets much further and get actual trajectory data that a consumer grade radar can't. For terminal testing it is much simpler to down load cartridges to simulate a long range impact and do the gel test at close range.

ACES&8S said:

I assumed as much since Nosler has pics of their bullets at close & long range. retrieved from ballistic
gel showing bullet expansion at various reload [speeds] per propellent used & the velocity needed to achieve
minimum to maximum expansion with their 8mm 180 grain spitzer.

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Just a warning on that, I assume your talking about the pictures on the box right? If you look at several boxes you will notice that they use the same exact picture on several different bullets. Those pictures are complete BS. I have shot nosler BT's into 3 different media's at 2000-3000 fps and never once have I ever recovered a nosler BT with the core and jacket intact. The picture on the box should be a mangled up jacket base, about 5 jacket fragments, a loose chunk of lead the size of a pea, and about 50 little lead fragments. That would be a much more accurate representation.

How long ago, and which specific Nosler BT's did you test. Nosler got a lot of complaints about over expansion and poor penetration from the BT bullets. Mostly from guys who used them for elk or larger game even though Nosler did not recommend them for game that large.

Nosler's answer was to toughen up some of the BT bullets, specifically those that an elk hunter might use. Any 30 caliber BT 165 gr or heavier made in the last 10 years or so is a much tougher bullet. Comparing very closely to the Accubond. I know they did the same with heavier 270 and 7mm bullets as well. They still don't recommend them for game that large, If they did it would be harder to sell the more expensive Accubond. But by all accounts those specific bullets perform just as well as Accubonds.

To the OP, there are some examples of guys shooting gel at 100 if you go to YouTube. There isn't much need to set up a chronograph at longer ranges. If you chronograph loads at the muzzle and have an accurate BC that is easily calculated.

People have done one, or both.


Hornady did something similar. It's a reduced-velocity test again, but they tried to account for certain factors:

Simply reducing the muzzle velocity of a projectile in a ‘standard’ twist rate barrel is not adequate for low speed impact testing. The resulting bullet spin rate and stability would be much lower than actually occurs and would not provide accurate projectile dynamics or terminal performance. Hornady used test barrels with fast twist rates, matched to actual impact velocities and spin rates calculated by the PRODAS computer code that provided the correct bullet impact and rotational velocities corresponding to the extended range impact velocities. All test barrel terminal performance results were confirmed with conventional tests at exact distances with standard barrels.

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jmr40 said:

How long ago, and which specific Nosler BT's did you test. Nosler got a lot of complaints about over expansion and poor penetration from the BT bullets. Mostly from guys who used them for elk or larger game even though Nosler did not recommend them for game that large.

Nosler's answer was to toughen up some of the BT bullets, specifically those that an elk hunter might use. Any 30 caliber BT 165 gr or heavier made in the last 10 years or so is a much tougher bullet. Comparing very closely to the Accubond. I know they did the same with heavier 270 and 7mm bullets as well. They still don't recommend them for game that large, If they did it would be harder to sell the more expensive Accubond. But by all accounts those specific bullets perform just as well as Accubonds.

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Within the last 2 years. 125, 165, and 180 grain 30 calibers, and 120 grain 25 calibers. The 125’s we tested in a 30 Herrett pistol and they all fragmented and lost their core at only 1900 FPS. The 180’s come apart from my Krag which is like 2350 at the muzzle. I also tested them in 223 a few years ago. I was looking for something that would expand like a hunting bullet but with a BC like a vmax, but they explode when they hit anything.