Shooting Chrony Gamma Master Review

Published February 24, 2011 |

One handy way of testing the performance of your air gun is to test its velocity with a shooting chronograph. Using a ‘chrony’ is a great way to discover how the weight of various pellets affect the velocity of your air gun when fired. It’s also handy with CO2 powered air guns when trouble shooting performance problems as well as discovering how many shots can be fired before the performance drops.

Today we’re reviewing one such chrony, the Gamma Master from Shooting Chrony. The Gamma Master is Shooting Chrony’s flagship unit that comes with all the bells and whistles. The Gamma Master is not only for airguns, it can be used with firearms, arrows , paint ball guns, airsoft and even golf balls.

Specifications:

Summary of Features/Capabilities:

Uses one 9 volt alkaline battery (not included) for approx 48 hours of continuous use.

Mount onto a tripod or place on a table.

Has a large LCD-readout, 0.5″ high.

Has an adjustable size, triangular shooting area from 8″ x 8″ to 14.5″ x 14.5″. The sides of the triangular shooting areas are made of wire-rods; the top of the triangle is formed by a 2-1/4″ wide x 1/8″ thick strip of tough, Hi-density polyethylene plastic.

The LCD-readout and most of the Electronics are located in a separate, small housing, the Control Monitor, connected to the housing with a 16 ft. telephone cord. This brings the LCD-readout right up to the shooting bench. The Control Monitor also functions as a Remote Control.

Gives numbered shot velocities and velocity stays on display until you shoot again.

Measures High, Low and Average Velocities, Extreme Spread and Standard Deviations.

500 shot memory (divided into 50 numbered strings of 2 to 10 shots each).

Dimensions:

Measures 7-1/2″ long, 4-1/2″ wide, and 2-3/4″ high when folded.

Weighs less than 2-1/2 pounds.

Made of 20 gauge steel.

Accessories Included:

Shooting Chrony Ballistic Printer: Prints on plain paper, comes with 16 ft. interface cable and runs on 4 batteries (AA, 6V), included and connects to the Chrony with a cable.

Other Accessories:

Can be switched off, taken home and switched on for reviewing, information retrieval or, (together with optional IBM Interface, not available from MidwayUSA) downloading onto your computer
Moves instantly from string to string, interrupts shooting on any string without memory loss, each string delivers its own statistics, etc

Notes:

Three year limited warranty

Demo software included is not compatible with Windows XP

Not for use with Neon or other flourescent lighting, as they flicker at twice the AC frequency and cause false readings.

For indoors, a light-diffuser and an incandescent light source must be located above each photo-sensor. Use an Indoor Shooting Light Fixture, product #432880.

The Gamma Master is designed for portability and easy assembly that can be put together in about 2-3 minutes. One way Shooting Chrony came up with to keep the chrony portable, is the unit is designed to fold in half when not in use. All the components can be stored in a small carrying case, and in fact Shooting Chrony offers their own carrying case specifically for their chronys for purchase on their site.

The Gamma Master can measure the speed of bullets and other projectiles from 30 to 7000 feet per second. It easily mounts on any tripod or it can be placed on a table. It runs on one 9 volt battery (not included) for 48 hours of continuous use. Included with the Gamma Master is the Ballistic Chrony Printer and features a 500 shot memory divided into 50 numbered strings of 2 to 10 shots each. The user can also measure and stores shot velocities, time-elapsed between shots, and a timer mode measures up to 1800 rounds/per minute.

Above we can see the remote control unit for the chronograph with its LED screen. The remote connects to the sensor box by a generous 16 foot long cable and can also be mounted to a tripod.

For outdoor use all you need is a 9 volt battery to power the Gamma Master. Then you can start your testing and print out the results; or save the data to memory for later viewing at home and print them out on the Ballistic Printer or even on to your computer using a special cable (sold separately) and a program called Chrony Ballistics.

The Ballistic Printer is a handy way to print a hard copy of your results. The printer is included with the Gamma Master, but can be bought separately if you own one of the models that didn’t include the Ballistic Chrony.

The printer can be powered by four AA batteries for outdoor use or with a standard AC power adapter indoors. The unit plugs into a jack on the side of the remote just below the power jack.

The printer can be setup to print two ways. The first is a print as you shoot method where the results print statistics such as: LO, HI and Average velocity, Extreme Spread and Standard Deviation. The second method allows you shoot then print your results including the statistics.

Here we have the Chrony mounted on a tripod with the diffusers installed. The diffusers are needed only in very bright sunlight.

The support rods each come in two short pieces, the plastic diffusers are each formed from three pop together plastic parts, each about 4.5″ long. When assembled, the shoot through area is 14.5″ high and 14.5″ wide at the top of the screen. The diffusers are used to create a uniform background to help the photocells pick up the contrast of the passing projectile.

Since we will be testing the unit in doors, we changed the diffusers to Shooting Chrony’s new Chrony LED Lamp diffusers. The new Chrony LED lamp allows the chrony to work under any light condition and give consistent velocities: Indoors, Outdoors, even on overcast days, or in the shade.

Using the Chrony may seem a bit overwhelming with all the buttons displayed above, but luckily you’ll only need to be familiar with a couple of buttons to get you started using the basic functions.

To start you need to switch the unit on. Now you can shoot a string of shots up to 10 shots. Each time you shoot the LED display will show the shot number briefly, and then the velocity of the projectile will be displayed. You now can either print the results with the Ballistic Printer by pressing the STATistics & VELocity button or press the Forget button on the remote to clear the data and start another string of 10 shots.

More advanced function options include saving the results to memory, for later review.

We tested out the Gamma Master with an Umarex H&K MP5-PDW.

The meaning of the symbols are as follows:

- is the lowest velocity recorded.

+ is the highest velocity recorded.

* is the average velocity recorded.

C is the Extreme Spread (highest -lowest velocity recorded).

D (diamond ) is a measure of how close each shot’s velocity will be to the “average” shot.

#1 to #10 is the velocities of the ten shots.

We found that all the basic functions were pretty intuitive, and we were up and running in no time. The print as you shoot mode works well as long as you don’t shoot when its printing, other wise you get an ‘err’ error message.

The Gamma Master is a solidly built and portable shooting chrony that’s quick to setup. Both at home indoors and out the Gamma Master is the tool for serious shooters.

PROS:

-Portable

-Can be used indoors and outdoors

-Can be run on batteries

-Handy Remote with 16 foot cable

-Tripod mountable

-Ballistic Printer

-500 shot memory (divided into 50 numbered strings of 2 to 10 shots each)

-Memory for 500 individual Timer Read-Outs

-Plenty of accessories

Cons-

Rating: