Ladies and Gents,

I am starting my road into longer range shooting/competition shooting. I have my first rifle and optic - Bargara B14 HMR in 6.5 Creedmoor and a Vortex HST 6-24. I have a chronograph to measure velocity. What I don't have and I consider important enough to get, is a hand held weather meter.

Now I know that Kestrels are the gold stardard but I cannot afford at this time to go straight up to a 5500 with LiNK and Applied Ballistics - if I had that kind of spare money I would also have other toys. But I don't but do realize that there are some basic requirements that any one I do get should have.

So, what do you consider the minimum/required or what models have you used (not the top end) that have given you success. Again, I'm NOT going to buy a 5500 off the bat. I can manually type things in and I don't need real time adjusted ballistic tables to match the exact weather at any given moment. As I learn and get better and shoot farther I will end up there. But not to start.