I have just began to reload, I am shooting 150gr speer tips, with a 48grain charge, I went shooting for the first time with the reloads and was extremely happy, I was shooting down the middle. Now after thinking about it for a while, how do I figure out the distance it drops. I know that on factory bullets it tells you at 100yd high 2.4, 200yd right on. HOW DO I FIGURE THE RATE IT FALLS

You could buy a chronograph for $70-200 or simply shoot at targets at various distances.

With either solution, once you know the muzzle velocity or the drop at various distances, you can use a drop table (found in the back of Speer's and others' reloading manuals) to calculate drop at other distances.

A high end chronograph such as an Oehler or PACT PC2 will often come with a calculator feature that will give you drop if you can tell it the velocity and BC. I think you can download software off the web to do these calculations for free.

H. C.

Snodude - Here is a very useful ballistics web site that you can run all the �what if's� you want. This will help you calculate a lot more than bullet drop - http://www.eskimo.com/~jbm/ballistics/calculations.html Scroll down to the Trajectories -- Basic for the streamlined version. You will need to know bullet BC, Velocity, Bullet Weight and a few other odds and ends.

You might also want to check out this site - http://www.nennstiel-ruprecht.de/bullfly/index.htm This will give you everything you wanted to know about external ballistics.

The only sure way to find out how much a bullet will drop at a given distance is to shoot it at that distance and measure the drop.Even with an exact muzzle velocity and a trajectory table there can be more error than one would think possible.