Strelok Pro: Top-drawer ballistic app

Strelok Pro is one of the best ballistic apps available to help you project your bullet’s flight path. In this article, we’ll go over the general data needed to plot a firing solution and some best practice for collecting it. “Garbage in, garbage out” is a common saying that rings true for any ballistic solvers. The better the data you feed into the app, the more accurate the firing solution. This also commonly referred to as DOPE, drop, come-up, holdover, hold or holds. DOPE stands for Data On Previous Engagement. Before ballistic solvers, we had to rely on notes in a shooting journal or DOPE book to aid us in long-range shooting. Today’s apps have replaced a lot, but not all, of the functionality of a traditional DOPE book.

Programming the app

We’re going to do a quick run through of the settings tab (bottom left) before we get started on the main screen. Consider these settings as the default, and screenshot it if you’d like. You can change all these later, but starting out it will be easier if you set it up in this way:

Consider Powder Temperature: Off

(If you have a load dialled in and record its muzzle velocity (MV) at different temperatures throughout the year, you can build a table that will automatically adjust your velocity based on temperature. I made a temperature controllable ammunition box to play around with this, and found it helpful in wintertime.)

Show SMOA instead MOA: Off

(MOA is an angular unit of measurement that equates to 1.047” at a distance of 100 yd. One MOA at 200 yd would be 2.094”, 3.141” @300 yd, etc. Some shooters disregard the .047” and just call it 1” @100, 2” @200 yd, 3” at 300 yd, which isn’t technically accurate, but if that’s what you prefer, you can set it to ‘Shooter MOA’ measurements instead of actual MOA.)

Add vertical deflection of crosswind to results: On

(A horizontal wind can actually cause your point of impact to be higher or lower. You can toggle this option to see how much it affects your shots in each scenario.)

Set relation manually: Off

(If you’re absolutely dialled in to where you are shooting tight ‘bughole’ sized groups at 100 yd, blasting varmints at 700 yd, milk jugs at a mile, and you observe some anomalies that make you suspect your bullet’s spin calculation might be drifting off, you can fine tune how much the wind affects your bullet’s vertical deflection. A great feature if you have access to wind LiDAR or are just a wind god like Todd Hodnett.)

Adding spin drift to results: On

(Your bullet actually rolls off the air and drifts in the direction it’s spinning. Think of a bowling ball rolling. This is a setting we regularly toggle on and off when studying different scenarios.)

Adding Coriolis effect to results: Off

(This has a very minimal affect even at farther distances. I typically only turn it on when shooting past a mile. It takes a bit of time and effort to use this function correctly.)

Using U/D and L/R instead +/-: On

Slope angle measuring: Phone camera

Turret step is equal to scope click: On

Show clicks in 1 3/4 layout: Off

Disable screen timeout: On

I have Vectronix Rangefinder: Off

(Strelok will sync with the expensive Vectronix gear.)

Main Screen

Distance:

Distance from the target to the barrel’s muzzle, where we begin all our calculations. Most military shooters use metres as their measurement; most other people use yards. You can change the measurement in the settings.

The best way to gather this information is to use a decent rangefinder and crouch, kneel or lay down so that you position the rangefinder close to the muzzle and look at your intended target. If you don’t have a rangefinder, you can also use GPS map apps (TacticalNav is great because you can store offline maps for later use where there’s no cellphone reception.)

Another option