How to Use Your ShotMarker Strings at Home

Your ShotMarker keeps every string on the Access Point at the range. Once you pack up, getting at them takes an export. Here's how to get the file, what ShotMarker offers for opening it at home, and what Loadscope does with the same file.

Export your strings

In the ShotMarker app, open the folder menu, choose Export, pick the strings you want and export them. You end up with a single .tar file on the phone or tablet you were using. Move it to your computer however you usually move files — AirDrop, email or a cloud folder. If Export isn't offered at a match, the match director has it locked; ask them to turn that setting off.

ShotMarker also has a CSV export on its Administration screen. Loadscope reads both, but the .tar is the better file: it keeps the groups you drew on the target and the time every shot was fired. The CSV only carries the date the string was saved.

ShotMarker's own options for opening it

ShotMarker's FAQ lists two ways to open that .tar away from the range: upload it to their online demo site — which, in their words, is “100% public” — or buy a second Access Point for home, at $100. Both show you the target the way you saw it at the range.

What Loadscope does with the same file

Loadscope opens the .tar on your Mac or Windows computer, privately and offline. It doesn't redraw the target — it measures it:

• Your groups, the way you drew them. If you boxed each group on the target, Loadscope uses exactly those. If you didn't, it separates the aim points itself when they're clearly apart, and tells you when it isn't sure instead of guessing.
• The numbers for every group — group size, mean radius, vertical, width and height. Sighters and overflow shots are left out, the same way ShotMarker leaves them out.
• Matched to your chronograph. Drop the .tar in with your chronograph file. Loadscope pairs each group to its velocity string by the time the shots were fired, then scores every charge or seating depth and names your best load.
• No labels needed. You can name groups on the target if you like, but Loadscope never reads a charge out of a name. The charge comes from your ladder plan, by shooting order.

Which one you want

If you want to look at the target again, shot by shot, ShotMarker's viewer is the tool. If you want to know which load won, that's the job Loadscope does — and it keeps your data on your own computer.