Re: Help me pick a chronograph
I bought my Oehler M33 back about 1982/3. It served quite well for 20 odd plus years. It finally died at the hands of a miss place 357 Mag; I was not the shooter. Since Oehler had no more spare parts I had to buy the CED M2. It served quite well for the first 9 months. One day it quit working. After numerous phone calls and "flash light tests" with the CED CS folks, it was determined they would replace my main unit; then one sky screen and eventually the next sky screen. This happened over the summer of 2010. I lost my entire summer's worth of shooting to this POS. Charles Hardy, the CEO, called me from Hong Kong, while on a business trip and after 20-30 min of talking deemed me fully capable of running a chronograph. Apparently he feels most customers don't know how to properly operate one. So after spending numerous hours on the phone and my own money to send each component back for replacement, the new components started working again but with a quirk. It started to have problems that equated to it not detecting the bullet passing overhead around 10:30 each morning. It was so weird. I could just about tell what time it was without even looking at my watch. After fighting with this for 3 months I was DONE. I sent a terse email to Hardy demanding my money back. It really went down hill from there. He accused me of not knowing how to operate a chronograph. He suggested for the M2 to work properly I should build a black box like the one they show in their DVD. Give me a break! If a chronograph needs to be place in a dark box to operate, what does that say about their unit? Hardy agreed to refund my money as it was still under the 1 year warranty. I got something like $60 some odd dollars.
I took that $ and ordered a new Oehler M35P and MAN let me tell you. That thing simply works in any condition I've used it in. Overcast, sunny, cold, bright and sunny with snow on the ground, early, mid day, freezing temps and the sun direction has not affected it one single bit! Their's a string of conversations over on Longrangehunting.com and numerous CED M2 users have also had horrible experiences the M2.
Maybe I got a lemon and then another lemon but it sealed my opinion of CED after dealing with Charles Hardy. He needs to leave his CS issues to his CS folks.
Alan