One month in.

So, we’re one month in since the launch.  And in that time we’ve had over a third of a million hits.  Referrals (meaning that people clicked a link that took them to Bbti) from over 500 sites.  Visitors from all around the globe (though the vast majority are from the US), and discussions about the project in at least half a dozen languages that I’ve come across so far.

Increasingly, I see our site being listed as a reference in discussions pertaining to ballistic performance of a given caliber, as I noted the other day in comments to this post.  This is what I find most rewarding – because we did the project not in order to just shoot up a bunch of ammo, but to create a database that would be useful to people.  Sure, the initial surge of interest was because of the novelty of the project – the “they did WHAT?” aspect of it.  But the real value over the long term is having the information freely available for anyone who needs it.

I’m glad that most people have responded positively to our project.  There have been only a few detractors that I have seen so far, usually of the variety of people complaining that we either didn’t test rimfire or rifle calibers, or that we didn’t test their particular handgun or pistol-caliber carbine as part of the “real world” tests, and so the information is ‘useless’.  But with any endeavour you have to expect some complaints, no matter what.  As I have posted in one form or another on several forums:

… nowhere on our site or elsewhere where I have commented about the tests will you see *anything* which claims that we have conducted the definitive tests for all time, nor that anyone should refrain from doing similar rigorous research. In fact, we *welcome* more testing – we’re willing to put it on our site and give others all the credit for their work – if it is documented and transparent, as our data is.

You’re welcome to conduct your own tests – take the time, spend the money, do the work, then compile and put it online for any and all to see and use freely. Please. Do it – we’ll all benefit. Until then, you’ll forgive me if I don’t have a lot of sympathy for your complaints that we didn’t conduct the tests the way you would like to see them.

So, yeah, it has been a smashing success.  We have at least one magazine article in the works about the project (for Concealed Carry Magazine), and at least one representative from an ammo manufacturer has said online that they welcome our data and will be using it to improve their product in the future.  If that happens, it will be a wonderful side benefit to the whole project.

Thanks to all who have helped to spread the word – all those who posted our link, and all those who have told their friends.

Cheers!

Jim Downey

Some thoughts from the data graphs

JE  mentioned to me observing some oscillation in some of the graphs. I have spent a little time today working through all of the graphs and have the following thoughts:

- most of any oscillation appears in the “saturation” velocity tail. Since we have not put the “error/spread” bars on the data points I suggest that most of what one sees in the portion of the data is the natural variance in the ammunition.

- the smallest calibers show the biggest effect. With the lightest bullets a small variation in powder should produce a larger variance in the velocity.

- there is some anomaly in combining these two effects in a couple of the calibers. In particular I think it is the .44 spc and .45 colt.

- even with these, one can readily see that some of the ammo has maxed out and is actually slowing in the 18″ barrel.

jim k

More testing of more calibers coming.

Hey everyone,

Well, in less than two weeks we’ve seen over 200,000 hits to the site, and the news of our project propagate widely through the gun community and even beyond.  There’s been a lot of discussion about our efforts, almost uniformly positive, and this is really good to see.  Over 700 people have downloaded the data spreadsheets, and almost 100 have downloaded the emails documenting the project from start to finish.

This response, and the comments we have seen around the web, have prompted us to plan to do another round of testing this next spring.  Sorry for the delay, but we need some lead time to have the custom barrels made and to plan our schedules.

After discussion, we’ve decided to test the following calibers:

• .327 Federal Magnum
• .41 Magnum
• 10mm

We feel that these help fill out the other calibers we’ve already tested, extending the coverage of the most common handgun calibers actually carried (with the exception of the .327 mag – we just want to see how that actually performs).

So, something to look forward to in the new year!

Cheers -

Jim D.

I’d call that success.

This is going to become a post to track the coverage of Ballistics by the inch as it propagates through the gun world and around the web.  As such, I’m going to move some comments I made in another post to here.  Feel free to post any links or information you have about where you’ve seen Bbti.

Jim K this morning sent me the results of Google searches he did, just to see what turned up a week after we’d set up the site.  My response to him:

Did just poke around the stats site.  Still dropping off from Sunday’s high.  But we’re at 80k hits in just five days (well, 4.5, since it didn’t go public until about 11:00 AM CST).  Another big aggregator site is going to link it today.  Looking at just yesterday’s numbers, it is interesting to see how it is still spreading to lots of small blogs and whatnot.

What we have is good initial penetration into the gun world, with the possibility of it going further afield.  But even if it doesn’t explode much farther out, we’ve accomplished a very good launch.  The project is known now among those who most want the information, and it will quickly (if it hasn’t already) become the “gold standard” data source for the ballistics we tested.  From now on if people need the data, they’ll start with our project.

I’d call that success.

Here’s something I noted on my personal blog yesterday:

An update to this post…  In the four days since the site went public, we’ve had almost 75,000 hits.  That’s more hits than I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site this entire year.  I’d say it’s off to a good start.  Interesting that it has already started to propagate beyond the usual gun forums and whatnot – we got a lot of hits from a link on SomethingAwful, and we’re seeing some links from people’s Facebook and Myspace pages.

So, yeah, the initial launch has been a success.  And the comments and discussions I’ve seen around the net so far have been very positive, appreciating the amount of work and the care with which we conducted our testing.  Nice to have accomplished what we set out to do.

Jim Downey

Anecdotes.

OK, this is going to be a bit of a catch-all entry, where I (and I hope Jim K and Steve) will post some little comments and observations about doing the project.  A lot of this stuff you would probably find if you poke around deep enough in either the Emails or the flickr images, but it’s nice to get an individual story as well.

* * *

See the title on the site?  The tag line: “Three guys, two chronographs, and 7,000 rounds of ammo . . . ” really oughtta be “Three guys, FOUR chronographs, and 7,000 rounds of ammo . . . “

Yeah, we killed two chronographs.  Put a bullet (a .45 colt, if memory serves) right through the forehead of the first one, which went through the one behind it.  Happened during the first day of testing in the second flight of tests.  I blogged about it that night; here’s an excerpt:

What happened was this: one of us (who shall for now remain nameless, until I can spend more time to write up the saga appropriately) was in the middle of shooting the second most powerful of the calibers we’re testing, and didn’t manage to control the gun completely when he fired the round. And it went right through both chronographs. Perfectly.

We use two chronographs, lined up one in front of the other, to be sure we’re getting good data. He hit the first one right dead center, a little high from the middle. Like a perfect shot in a movie, hitting the bad guy right between the eyes. The large bullet punched through the display, destroyed the electronics, and shattered the back of the chrono – then entered the front sensor of the second chrono, exiting out the bottom rear sensor as well.

It was spectacular. A perfect shot. I have pix I’ll be posting later.

Ah, good times, good times.  We put an armour plate (a railway tie plate) in front of the next set of chronographs from then on.  Good thing, too, that saved us probably another five or six sets of chronographs.  Live and learn.

Jim Downey