IMPORTANT: Starting March 1, 2026, billing for Science of Accuracy subscriptions ends permanently.
Website access and standalone content will be discontinued soon after. Transition now to AB Quantum™ to keep enjoying – and dramatically enhance – your educational journey through AB Quantum™ which now incorporates the Science of Accuracy Academy™ in the AB Learn tool and directly interact with AB content using AB Spotter.
The Science of Accuracy is Transitioning to AB Quantum™ with AB Learn and AB Spotter
The podcasts, instructional videos, and other content previously on The Science of Accuracy Academy™ site are now accessible via AB Learn, built directly into AB Quantum™ and available with a PRO-level subscription. No more separate logins or browsers: watch, listen, and learn on the go, then immediately apply insights directly in AB Quantum™.
The Future Is Here: AB Spotter – Your Personal Ballistics Expert
With the latest AB Quantum™ update (3.5) and a PRO level subscription, we’ve integrated AB Spotter: an advanced AI assistant trained exclusively on the complete Applied Ballistics knowledge database. This includes:
- All Applied Ballistics books
- Every white paper and technical resource ever produced
- The full library of podcasts and videos from The Science of Accuracy Academy™
- Device user manuals, setup guides, and troubleshooting documents
AB Spotter lets you directly interact with this vast expertise in real time. Ask detailed ballistics questions – from deep dives into aerodynamic principles, spin drift causes and corrections, precise WEZ assessments, gun profile optimization, to app settings, Bluetooth connectivity issues, device compatibility, licensing, and more – and get accurate, trustworthy answers grounded solely in Applied Ballistics’ authoritative sources. It’s like having Bryan Litz and the entire AB team available 24/7 right inside your phone, ready to explain concepts, solve problems, and guide you to better shots.
Benefits of Switching to AB Quantum
- Direct, Conversational Access to AB Knowledge: AB Spotter turns passive reading/watching into active Q&A – get instant, personalized explanations for any ballistics topic or app/device question.
- More Cost-Effective: No separate subscription required for education – AB Learn and AB Spotter are part of AB Quantum’s ecosystem.
- Superior On-the-Go Experience: Mobile-first design means your full library + AI expert travel with you to the range, hunt, or match – ask questions in the field and get answers without delay.
Update 3.5 featuring AB Spotter and AB Learn is available now. Download today, subscribe, and explore AB Spotter by asking your toughest ballistics questions, and experience the next level of precision shooting education and support.
Hi,
Is there a problem with the Neck Tension audio from 44:03 onwards ?
Hello Robert-
Thank you for the heads up, we have corrected the audio and you should be all set now!
Hi,
What is relation between neck tension (heavy or light) vs accuracy ? Have you done some test in this dirrection ? Sorry , I didn’t heard nothing in the podcast, maybe I have missed..
Thank you!
Cristi
We have done testing on this and haven’t found any relationship between neck tension and groups UNLESS neck tension is so heavy that you damage bullets when seated. Such heavy neck tension also often results in high CBTO variation. Neither of those things are good, although we have not directly confirmed that they make groups bigger.
Take care,
-Bryan
Have you done any testing on headspace vs poi change?
Only indirectly; in the sense that Removing/Replacing barrels on Savage actions results in headspace not being 100% repeatable. We haven’t noticed precision being greatly affected by this, but we haven’t tested specifically for it either. Those guns are assembled to shoot for radar tests to characterize flight performance and we usually don’t even look at groups beyond verifying the bullets are stable and flying good enough to characterize drag. In the tests where we are looking at groups, it doesn’t seem to matter what the exact headspace is as long as it’s between the GO and NOGO gauge.
-Bryan
Bryan, after listening to these and reading the book, is velocity SD the only thing that handloading affects to precision? Not including damaging the bullet when seating.
Jay,
To be strictly technical, the SD of velocity and the SD of the bullets BC are two factors you control with handloading that affect precision (groups) at long range.
Other things you control as a hand-loader can affect precision beginning at short range (100 yards) such as bullet seating depth (jump).
Consistency is known to be a good thing for precision, but there are some variables that are more conditional than others, like neck tension. There may be applications where neck tension really affects groups, but when directly tested to a statistically significant degree, neck tension and many other variables have been determined to not affect precision.
Check out the podcast/Chapter on TOP Gun which talks more about our Theory Of Precision being mostly driven by the gun weight to bullet KE ratio.
Take care,
-Bryan
Thanks Bryan! That was the kind of answer that I was hoping to get.
Without a force gauge the most reliable way to check neck tension is with pin gauges, at least that we have found in BR.
Without a force gauge the most reliable way to check neck tension is with pin gauges, at least that we have found in BR.