Patrick Kelly

When I was working up match loads, I didn’t care about anything except the consistency of velocity. So long as the bullet passed through the screens and safely hit the backstop, nothing else mattered.

I like the PACT style system where only the inexpensively replaceable skyscreen sensors are exposed to wandering bullets.

My original first generation PACT had it’s share of non, or funky readings due mostly to light changes while shooting. I’m ordering a new one with the infrared skycreens.

I still remember vividly sitting at a cold concrete bench in early spring as we tried over and over again to chronograph some .223 loads for dad’s AR15 and some 25-06 loads for the upcoming Ohio groundhog season, and the chronograph, as usual, did not always give a reading…

Those were pre-internet days, with nobody but the manufacturer’s help line to call for help, and quality service was not available 24/7.

We were focused on getting good readings, and thought that maybe the bullets were not close enough to the sensor. Dad was crouched behind me, instructing me to shoot carefully lower and lower over the PACT. At some point I remember telling him that I didn’t think I could shoot any lower without destroying it…but still, we could not get a consistent reading and we finally gave up.

When packing it away, we had to laugh at the plastic sensor housings…there were a bunch of half circle marks melted into the very top. It took about a minute for us to realize that we had actually shot so low that the bullets were skipping off the top of the plastic housing…you seriously could not shoot any lower…and we laughed at how unreliable technology could be, and we packed up the PACT and never shot over it together again.

After my dad passed, that POS PACT came into my possession and sat in a box for a couple years. When work moved me to California and I finally setting down enough to reload again, I pulled that testy device out one last time to see if I could figure out how to get it to read one last time before I tossed it.

In the harsh California sun, with no clouds in the sky, that PACT worked just fine…every time. After time, I noticed that should a cloud happen to pass overhead, or the shade move over the PACT, it would quit working. The overcast sky so common in Ohio was the PACT nemesis, something you’d think the manufacturer would have been able to help us figure out many years prior.

I still use that same PACT chronograph a couple times a year to help me verify a new lot of powder and to assist in building new drop charts. It still cracks me up seeing the melted bullet marks over the sensor, and I think how much time my dad and I spent fiddling with it in Ohio. When the electronics finally give out on this luxury tool, I can promise you that I’ll bring my 25-06 out with a Partition load, and ventilate it properly…then go home and drink a scotch in honor of my dad.