I just got a copy of Quick Load and had a question on it's accuracy on cartridges like the 300 Weatherby and 375 H&H. When I plug in most of the book loads from the various manuals for powders like Norma 203B and RL-15, it quickly gets into the red range for the recommended loads from Barnes and Norma.

However, when I plug in other loads I'm using I get the following:

1. It's almost spot on at predicting muzzle velocity to within <1.5% of my actual results on the same loads. Loads tested: 7mm-08, 308 win, 8x57, and 404 Jeff.

2. The Swift manual max loads correspond very close to the Quick Load calculations

3. It calculates a very high FPS and pressure on my 6.5x54 MS and 9.3x57 loads, which have actual results of 8-10% less FPS and I know have lower pressure.

Is this normal, especially for the 300 W and 375 H&H?

its been my experience that it tends to err on the side of caution, ive punched in a number of loads either from manuals or that have properly worked up and its told me they are unsafe when that's simply not the case. estimated velocity is also usually150 fps faster then real life, at least in my experience. all that said its a wonderful program, especially if your like me and load for a range of obscure cartridges with little to no available data ( like the 6.5x54 MS, which I also have and love)

I find it to be totally useless, so I bought a Pressure Trace II, gives me the ACTUAL pressure and my chronograph gives the ACTUAL velocity.
Quickload is what it is, a ballistics predictions program, not gospel. Those that have tweaked the parameter with quickload will tell you it's quite accurate, but anything can be tweaked to coincide with actual results that don't match. There are far too many variables in actual chamber size, smoothness/roughnes, bore dimension, land size, number, depth and width that cannot be punched in to Quickload to give reliable results. May as well just stick to published load manuals, IMHO.

Cheers.