Rianov Solo Bench Review - Range Upcoming

[The King]

Hey there everybody. This is a review of the RIANOV Solo Ballistic Computer. Today is a bench review and in the next few weeks it will update to a Range review as well.

Features:

• Built in Atmosphere reading of pressure and temperature
• Metal Chassis
• Waterproof? Hard to tell. I think the answer is yes because it seems well gasketed.
• CR123 battery lasts 2 years with normal use
• Backlit with adjustability from way down low to way up high
• Reads gun cant and slope when calculating
• I have yet to find a unit of measurement it won't support
• JBM ballistics solver
• Single gun memory
• Several drag models to include G1 and G7
• Spin drift and Coriolis
• Wind direction and speed are quick selectable

I ended up making a mount for the SPUHR. Now all I gotta do is find better screws.

Closer shot of the rig. I like 45 degree location.

I can see around the unit here to get elevation and the states of the Illum/Parallax Knob. This is what the shooter sees.

System config screen. I goes down in brightness to nighttime compatible all the way up to nuclear. Note that polarized glasses are bad with this unit.

Solution screen - current range, wind direction, wind, drop, wind value, and the cant/slope its using in the calc.

Changing the range will take you to the slope measure screen...it takes 3 seconds to measure the angles, then lets you change yardage.

Builtin weather data

Setting up the gun is easy. It does require that you put in everything though.

Con's/things I would do differently

• There should be a slope measurement button instead of having a separate screen pop up. There is room for 3 buttons each side...and only 2 on the left. Measure slope would be that 3rd button IMHO.
• The EagleII is neat, but I would like to be able to pay to upgrade the solo (maybe $50 more or so) to get truing and some other features.
• The mounting. Its metal, I know. It should be tough. I would go after mounting it in a stronger fashion.
• The sun hood works great as a sun hood. It sun hoods fine. Folding up to protect the unit is something it does not do for me - they should have just made it a sun hood only.
• I would like to be able to use the solver screen by simply pushing up/down/measure slope/left/right. Up/down is range in 25m inc, R/L is wind. No leaving the solver screen.
• Multiple BC Entry

 

[david8989]

I'm really looking forward to a field review as I am seriously considering one of these to replace my smartphone.

 

[JAGERSPEAR]

I can't believe their isn't more buzz on this thing. I got mine in and mounted last week. I can't wait to put it through the paces. It seems to be very solid, I will find out running it mounted on a F1 on a Scar H. Some of the things I would like to see are 1: better mounting solution, GDI LISTEN need a attachment for my p-rom-l. 2: A separate screen for ranging, that's not in a mode. 3: Real time corrections and display of slope/cant. 4: Correction for moving targets. 5: Truing. 6: A real flip up cover. Looking forward to the review.

 

[The King]

Range Review

OK - so we did a range session with the RIANOV. Learned some things, we did.

The good:

• Slinging the gun with the unit on and doing some hiking didn't murder my kidney like I thought it would.
• It rained and that didn't affect the unit in any notable way.
• The ballistics are dead on. Shot mostly to 600m, lots of up and down slope. Unit put it right on the line. This was shot deep in the Rockies and would challenge anyones slant sniper work. It managed a 1st round hit for it's 1st round.

The bad:

• The display is barely bright enough for the most challenging conditions ( bright sunlight in your face, dark sunglasses). Its bright enough to see, barely (on 20)
• Being able to change your units on the fly...sucks. No shit. It adds a substantial amount of button pushing to get past the unit changing fields on distance, wind, etc etc. Its on one gun, and I am metric only. No need to change it when I'm working.
• The "reset all" menu option is...for some reason...between you entering the distance to target and the menu option required to calculate the solution. Thats like having your car transmission be set to "Neutral, reverse, Park, Drive". Why?
• The button layout works. It does. But why its not a dpad or some other button concept caused some difficulty. It was easy to push the wrong button especially in the range entry box. The unit accepted button pushes very very easily.

RIANOV vs SMART PHONE APP
We put it up against the smart phone using some popular shooting apps.

RIANOV WINS

• Speed. Kinda. The RIANOV was faster than any app provided you were going to measure your cant/slope each time. Otherwise, speed edged to the smart phone.
• Automatic atmosphere. No entering it in, or getting it wrong. Once app developers realize that phones these days have barometers and temp sensors and and...it will likely flip over. But for now the phone developers have frankly been stupid about this. Its a free game changing hardware feature, and they aren't taking note.
• Battery life - 2 years versus crap my phones dead again get out the range cards.
• Toughness - some phones are this tough, but its rare.
• The RIANOV never interrupted my ballistics work with a phone call...or text message...or or or or or or or or....

APPS WON

• Gun/Ammo list.
• Bullet Libraries
• Atmosphere from station - can give you some wind data if you haven't a kestrel
• Cheap
• Changing targets very very very fast compare to RIANOV as long as you don't care about slope.
• Easy to see your transonic boundary. Rianov doesn't show this as far as I can tell.

Final conclusion - I have never used a ballistic system that I considered perfect. They all suffer from workflow management problems. None of them seem to fully realize the answer to the following dilemma: "oh shit I need the answer right fuckin now". However, the RIANOV is the closest I have come yet to my ideal solution. No entering weather data. No constantly dead battery. No smartphone to carry around and hope it works.

Maybe the next version of the RIANOV will fix these issues - maybe not. And it doesn't have to at ~$200. Its like the original 10x super sniper. It wasn't mil/mil...the reticle sucked...the turrets were like turning a greased pipe fitting. But it really did work, and that was something at it's price range.

 

[david8989]

Alright King, let me throw a scenario at ya. I do a lot of yote hunting in north Texas. Typically I use DA range cards and a wristband for quick shots at distance. Our normal shots are between 275 and 450yds but we have taken kills out to 680yds. But, lately they have been getting smart. I want to know if you think I would be able to spot a yote at say 800yds, enter info into Rianov for a shooting solution to take a shot on a non-alarmed yote? Did the sunshade help seeing the screen any?

 

[The King]

I was unable to tell if the shade helped much - I cant remove it in my current configuration. I think the answer to that whole line of thought is it works good enough in the mega bright assed sun. I shoot with a snipers veil over my stuff usually, which takes total care of it.

You can have an 800m solution in about 10 secs (Best I have managed is 9.09...13.21 seconds to change a bunch crap)

With a gun I knew excellently, good ammo that I have good chrono on...I would shoot at a yote at 800m. But only on an animal I consider to be an asshole. I would never shoot at an animal at that range with anything but 1km+ easy gun, like a 338 or a 7WSM.

Reason? This unit seems to totally nail the elevation. We were able to 1st round hit a 12" target at 600m...or 2moa.

However, while this unit calculates wind I find that wind is the real deal killer when shooting. I suspect its wind is as dead on as the rest of it.

Once of the nice things this unit does is temperature correction for ammo - so if you know your temp spread well you can enter it.

 

[david8989]

Well 10 sec is plenty fast enough for what were doing. The yote's are a serious problem where we hunt them. They bring down at least 3 livestock a week so we shoot to kill at whatever distance we can safely engage them. So far 1K has been my max attempt. I shoot a .260 rem with handloads that produce .5 MOA accuracy consistently. I'm starting to find that angle is making a difference in my hold that i'm not accounting for at long range. Thanks for your review King I believe i'm going to go ahead and pull the trigger on one of these units. One last question, Do you believe you'd be able to operate/see the rianov effectively behind the elevation turret without lifting off the rifle to much?

 

[The King]

I wasn't as worried about operating the rianov as I was the gap between the turret and the unit - it had to be enough to get my hand around the turret to turn it.

Every scope is pretty different in turret height, so that was also a concern for me. I have the Hensoldt which I would consider a medium turret height- for something tall like an SB PMII DT or a Leupold MK1 turret it could get pretty out there on height.

I was thinking about also making something out of a JEC Customs DOPE board mount.

 

[david8989]

Well I got one coming my way from euro optic. I also got the standard scope ring mount. Unfortunately they didn't have the sunshade in stock so I guess I will be trying this puppy out without. Hopefully I will be able to write a field review and maybe even get a yote hunt in with it as well.

 

[Rianov]

Thanks for the great review! We are very happy with the performance that shooters have been getting from the SOLO.

Knowing that you had a first round hit on the first solution given at 600M makes us proud of our products... wait until you try the RIANOV Eagle. We have had excellent results with first round hits out to 1350Y using a 308 (REM700/SPS).

We will continuing working to get you that "perfect" ballistic system. We already offer what you describe to the military. The RIANOV Eagle connected to a military LRF that provides a firing solution with the push of a single button, and the solution is presented to the user in under 1 second. We plan to have a similar set of commercially available products by SHOT Show 2015 for the hunting/competitive markets.

 

[The King]

Thank you - always good to see a manufacturer represent on a forum. I will be doing some more range time with this system and will post a followup review after either this weekend or next.