Jeff,
A quick defense of the use of the G1 in the older programs here, or at least a bit of background. The guys who do the Sierra ballistics portion of the manuals and software have been with the company as contract employees for over thirty years now; Bill McDonald and Ted Almgren. They are not, however, and never have been Sierra "employees." Both are very dear friends of mine, and guys for whom I have tremendous respect. Their association with Sierra resulted from their walking in to the front counter (literally) to buy some factory seconds back in the 70s, while we were all still in Santa Fe Springs, CA. At that time, Sierra was still "calculating" their BCs via the Coxe-Bugeless tables. No time of flight firings, no radar, no nothing. Bill and Ted struck up a conversation with Ken Smith (then the plant engineer) and/or Bob Hayden and explained a bit about what they could do to determine true BCs for the bullets by actually measuring the time of flight results. This, in turn lead to their long association with the company, and a progressive string of ballistic software over the years. And, I might add, some of the first true time of flight measured BCs within the bullet industry. They're still involved, though long since retired from their "day jobs." At the time they initially offered their services, you have to understand that very few folks outside of professional ballistic labs had ever so much as HEARD of Ballistic Coefficient, much less knew anything about how it worked. The only BCs being used by even major bullet and ammunition manufacturers at that time were tied to the G1, simply to keep everything at a "manageable" level of understanding. Bill and Ted realized that there were inherent limitations in using the G1 for everything (as it was the industry practice to do at that time), and set about trying to do something to deliver more accurate downrange data in the programs. The multiple velocity BC break points was Bill's solution, and he'd be the first to tell you that it is at best an imperfect fix. It was, however, the best they could do at that time, and still remain in the same pond with all the other ducks, such as Speer, Hornady and Nosler. Over the last few decades (largely due to AlGore's invention of the internet
) the shooting community has become tremendously better educated. Look no further than these boards, or this very thread for proof of that! It was only about twenty years ago that I read in print, from a VERY well known gunwriter, that BC was time of flight in a vacuum compared to time of flight in atmosphere. A comment like that today would likely get one laughed off these boards, permanently. Yeah, we've come a long way since then. Berger as a corporate entity, and Bryan in particular, have been the ones who've really stepped up to the plate and pushed this issue to the forefront. With the incredible variety of software out today, I think the situation is quite a bit different than when Ted and Bill offered the shooting public an initial peek into the unseen world of Ballistic Coefficients and trajectory calculations. Prior to them, the only people who had a clue about most of this were folks who'd waded through the classic Hatcher's Notebook or the other very complex texts relating to exterior ballistics. Few and far between, I assure you. While I hear the old saw that the other companies hold to the G1 drag model due to the higher numbers associated with them (and hence, sales appeal) I can pretty well assure you that's not the case. For many today, it's simply "status quo" and as we all know, inertia can be hard to overcome. Anyway, cut 'em some slack (Bill and Ted, anyway) and give credit where credit's due. If we have a better view of the world today, it's because we're standing on their shoulders.
Kevin Thomas
Lapua USA
