VE6AB Technical
Its All In The Lighting
Possibly your not familiar with a chronograph that is used for measuring the speed of an object passing over the sensors mounted at either end of the chronograph housing as seen here.
If you expand the photo and look close, you can see the openings in the two black housings mounted at either end.
This chrony as pictured will measure the speed of any object passing over the sensors and travelling between 50 fps (feet-per-second) up to 7000 fps.
The object can be an arrow, an airgun pellet, a bullet, a slingshot ball, or even a rubber band if you wish.
Outside the chrony works terrific with the natural lighting available, however when the chrony is used inside, the chrony will not function under florescent lighting, and requires an additional light source in the form of LED lighting.
This is true of all chronographs that are available today.
When I purchased this chrony several years ago, I also purchased the optional LED lighting kit for the chrony.
Although not pictured here, the optional LED lighting kit has its own set of diffusers that the LED strip bars are mounted to, that are identical to the diffusers pictured here.
Now the problem, it seemed like everytime I set up my chrony to measure the speed of a pellet passing over the sensors fired from my airgun, I would get errors recorded 1 out of 3 times on the readout.
This was quite annoying, because if I was shooting a 10 shot string, and wanted to record the average speed, well you get it.
After a number of calls to the Chrony tech-support line, and making all the adjustments recommended by the technician, I gave up.
Outside the unit worked flawless, inside, not so much.
After spending much time with the unit trying to come up with a solution, I had a eureka moment while looking at one of the LED worklights lying on the bench in my shop (pictured above).
I wondered what would happen if I mounted a pair of them in place of the factory LED lighting assemblies. With a trip over to Canadian Tire, I picked up a second LED light to match the one I already had, and upon arriving home, and 10 minutes later with both LED light assemblies in place, I gave it a test run.
I knew immediately the problem was solved, as I was able to shoot 10 shot strings with averaging once finished shooting with no errors.
Funny thing is, the lights as shown cost me 10.00 each including batteries for a total of 20.00.
The factory lighting kit was 90.00, and proved to be useless.
So if you are in the market for a chronograph, and go with the Shooting Chrony, and plan on using it indoors, don't buy the lighting kit, but purchase an inexpensive set of LED lights as shown here mounted in place on the diffusers of my chrony.
Click on the photo for a closer look......
