I have just purchased a copy of Quickload and am starting to check my developed loads against program output. I've measured everything about the bullets and cases and played with the neck factor....

I'm finding that Reloader 17 with high volume cases produces pressures and velocities in Quickload well above what I see on the range. I measure velocity with a Oehler 35P chronograph. Other powders come out agreeing with the chrono and program within reasonable tolerance and RL 17 seems to with compact cases.....

I finally decided to calculate chamber pressure in the larger cartridges by backing off the charge weight until Quickload produced the velocity I measured with the 35P. For the 375 that was a about 5 grains!

Has anyone else noticed this with RL 17? Any opinions or thoughts if calculated chamber pressure is correct when velocity is matched in this manner?

Cliff,
I haven't used RL-17. However I have had good (close) results with what QuickLoad says about RL-15.

I have heard of other folks having some anomalies with other loads on QuickLoad. You might check the archives.

quickload SEEMS (this is not reloading advice) to over predict vels AND pressure ..

i am good with that!

I have not tried RL17 but QL does make RL17 look like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

What I have found that if I adjust the burn rate of the powder in question I can get QL to match my velocity data and pretty much will translate for the same powder in different cases. I have had to both decrease and increase the burn rate depending on the specific powder.

One of these days I'm going to have to try RL17. Just looks to good to be true.

With Quickload, the correlation between its predictions and actual depend a lot on the cartridge you are working with. With most bottleneck carts like 30-06, 7mag, 308 Win, etc, Quickload is very good, but with a lot of the big bore carts like the 416 Rem, 458 Win and Lott, essentially relatively straight walled cases, it tends to predict higher velocities and higher pressures than actual. In the printed manuals of the early versions of Quickload, it even stated this. I don't know if they found a way around this in their software. I am not aware of any anomalies in regard to specific powders.

quote:

Originally posted by David:
With Quickload, the correlation between its predictions and actual depend a lot on the cartridge you are working with. With most bottleneck carts like 30-06, 7mag, 308 Win, etc, Quickload is very good, but with a lot of the big bore carts like the 416 Rem, 458 Win and Lott, essentially relatively straight walled cases, it tends to predict higher velocities and higher pressures than actual. In the printed manuals of the early versions of Quickload, it even stated this. I don't know if they found a way around this in their software. I am not aware of any anomalies in regard to specific powders.

Thanks to all for your replies!

David
What you describe matches my experience so I'm thinking the straight wall issue has not been worked out yet.

Paul
RL17 performs as advertised in efficient (short-fat) case designs. I picked up 100 to 150 fps using it. I have also found that it is quite temperature sensitive, so I won't use it in an application where I need to shoot long distance (900-1000 yds) more than 3-4 rounds at a time.

Regards,

Had the same experience with quickload.
I got much less velocity than what that predicted, though my version was 3.3 or 3.4

Another sign of this came up when i inputed the data from a Norwegian reloading manual in QL. The software predicted 75 or 80k.
But the thing is, that data had been tested at a proof house in Liege (and obviously found safe)...