Sunday, August 29, 2010

Palm Pilot Ballistic Programs

I spent $30 on a Palm Pilot on eBay, delivered. I'm not worried about bringing a $30 thing into the field, so it will be a dedicated Gun Computer, going beside the laser rangefinder. You can take notes with a stylus pen apparently, so I've decided a Palm Pilot Ballistic computer is A Good Thing.
Programming the thing (on a simulator) was a shock, no floating point math (this is a big deal), and 64kb of heap memory. GunSim was using over 4000kb of heap memory, but I was able to work around it.
I'll see how fast it is when it arrives.
I'll do a free basic version and a fancy version, maybe $30.
So $60 for a fancy hand held ballistics machine, cool. You can play games on it too. It gives exactly the same numbers as the online and Destop GunSim programs.
Exebal has a range estimation screen, that could be useful. Exebal has too may screens for my liking, I don't want to calculate point blank range much, certainly not in the field. Other than that, it looks good.
I assume a handheld is for field use, you just want the adjustments for whatever the range, wind and weather is. Comparing muzzle energies I can do at home. Or 2 programs, one  for using with one hand on the rifle, and another for comparing muzzle energies at the bus stop.

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