A step forward...maybe, maybe not, it depends very much on what type of shooting you're doing. I'd be a little cautious on how much faith I put in an analysis of a load based on one group posted on an internet forum, by a person that wasn't even there. It's much like the other group used as an illustration of a load that needed to be "tuned". Yes, I fully acknowledge that is one possibility. However, it's also possible there was some poor trigger control involved, or some intermittent breeze that went unnoticed. It seems to me that much of the wind/load development debate stems from the different disciplines involved. To that end, here are some of the major differences between F-Class and Benchrest and how I perceive they can easily make a big difference between the loading approaches likely to be successful in each:
1) In F-Class, we shoot longs strings of fire, typically as many as 25-30 rounds over 22-30 minutes. It's extremely rare to see a condition last long enough to fire all of your sighters and shots for record. In fact, major changes in direction and velocity often can occur as many as 5-10 times during a string if the conditions are challenging, with even more minor changes in between.
2) With good pit service, you're talking about a minimum of 8-10 seconds between shots. It is not feasible to machine gun shots during the short time a condition you favor may last, and expect to get all your shots for record completed before a change occurs. It is certainly possible to get a few shots in, then wait for a condition to return. However, many people have been bitten by that approach when the condition never returned and they were forced to fire a large number of shots in a short time under bad conditions, or else risk not finishing at all.
3) We load all the ammo we will shoot in advance of the match. Nor is there generally time for tweeking your tuner and hoping the condition you set it for last long enough to finish. People typically do not tune their loads or change their tuner setting during a match, and even if they did, the time course of is long enough that you would likely need to tune multiple times before your string was finished. For that reason, good wind calls are an absolute must.
4) Because of the length of fire, there is absolutely no way to know how the wind conditions will change during the course of a match. You might get lucky and have steady or low wind conditions, more often than not, you must pick your condition and hope it occurs frequently enough to finish, or make a certain number of shots in a condition that may be less favorable, but at least is one you feel confident your wind reading skills can handle.
These are the main reasons that F-Class shooters typically want to develop a load with the maximum resistance to external variables like temperature, that shoots the tightest groups they can manage, or at a bare minimum, one that will put 10 or more shots in under half a minute.
Some of you seem to think people like myself that use chronograph data and Quickload as important components of load development are incapable of understanding the concept of "tuning" a load for specific conditions. I suspect from reading many of the posts in threads like this and the other load development/wind thread that I actually understand it far better than some. You'll notice I wrote "tuning", and not load development, because I would characterize what you're describing as "tuning". In any event, I have no doubt whatsoever that loads can be tuned for a specific condition. In addition, I'm pretty well certain that way you're doing it is by simply changing barrel harmonics and group dispersion patterns such that they favor a specific wind condition. It has little or nothing to do with what I would call "wind resistance", but again that's debatable because I would define wind resistance as something that altered external ballistics of the bullet to make it less sensitive to wind deflection, not just changing some load parameter so the bore was pointing in a slightly different direction when the bullet exited it. However, if you want to call that "increased wind resistance" or "decreased wind sensitivity", I guess that's technically not incorrect, because the end result can be the same.
In any case, the bottom line is that the type of load development (tuning) that has been described here in the latest couple wind/load development threads is simply not feasible for F-Class for the reasons I listed and few, if any, do it that way. You might get away with it and do ok if the conditions were right, but I suspect in the long run that you'd lose a lot more points than you ever gained due to the differences in how the two types of matches are conducted.
Further, I still advocate that initial load development should be done in the least possible wind conditions available and here is why. Part of the reason is the statement above regarding what I would call "tuning" rather than "load development". In low- or no-wind conditions, developing a load with low ES and the best possible precision is absolutely possible, even for individuals with little experience. That is absolutely critical because not every person that reads these threads has enough experience to know how to shoot with good precision under different wind conditions, let alone how to tune a load correctly under those same conditions. I'd hate to think that someone with minimal experience reading these threads might now believe they should be doing all their load development in windy conditions at 1000 yd, which could certainly be inferred from a number of the posts contained herein. They'd likely end up wasting a lot of time and money without making significant progress. In addition, a highly precise load with good resistance to external effects can absolutely still be "tuned" as you are describing it for specific conditions. You guys make it sound like a load developed under low/no wind conditions is completely untunable from that point on, which is not the case. So why not start there and get a load that will at least work, and learn the more difficult aspect of tuning the load for wind as you gain more experience. That is still what makes the most sense to me.
