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And welcome to the Going Ballistic podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Kleckner. Depending on when you started listening to this, this may be a voice you haven't heard in a while. I'm trying to be back. I know last time I said I was back and I left you hanging. So here I am now. And I'm here because I'm really motivated to be here because I just got done finally writing the advanced version of my long range shooting books. See, I wrote the Long Range Shooting Handbook almost ten years ago now. This is December, as I record this, December 2025. And in February 2026, it will have been 10 years exactly since the first book came out. I can't believe it. So much has happened in my life, and I'm sure in yours as well, since then. And I mean, 10 years ago, when I wrote the book without false humility, I honestly thought or expected that my mom and a few friends would buy the book. And I would have been happy because I just wanted to say I wrote a book, but the book took off because you guys supported it so well, which I incredibly appreciate. I had no idea it was going to do that. If I did, I would have taken better pictures. But it resonated with you all, and I'm thankful for that. And it changed the trajectory of what I do for business and what I do for my life and the time I spend with my kids. And that's because of you guys. And I appreciate that. I don't forget that I am long overdue, however, for the second book, because I kept teasing I was going to do an advanced book. And there's a few reasons I didn't do the advanced book sooner. One is I allowed myself to get distracted with so many other businesses. The first one was Mayday Safety, the software company that I made along with my friend James west to help handle emergencies like active shooter situations. And I think that was a worthwhile goal. But I got distracted doing that. And then I started building out Gun University. And then Rocket FFL started growing. And then, and then, and then, and then, of course, big life changes, too. I ended up moving from Tennessee back to Arizona. I have new children now. I have a new marriage now. And things are so awesome right now that it gave me the time and the motivation and the boost to get the second book done. But really, if I'm being honest, if I'm being honest, one of the biggest reasons I didn't do the second book sooner was I was afraid. I was afraid of failing because the first book I didn't know what the secret sauce was. I just wrote down what I thought the basics were and it worked. And I was, oh no, it did. So great. What if the second book is horrible? What if the second book doesn't take off? You know, also the advanced stuff. I'm not the advanced guy, I'm the basics guy. If I could have one thing that I want to be proud of for how I teach, it's dumbing things down. It's not advanced. It's, yeah, the spin of the earth. Technically matters, but you need to stop worrying about that. Let's focus on the basics and do that. And I was thinking, man, if I go to the advanced stuff, not only is that not me, I'm gonna feel like even more of a fraud because it's gonna be like I'm gonna have to be doing research to even explain some of these concepts because I don't even know them. Like I do the basics, like I could just rattle off at the back of my hand, you know, And I finally got over that recently where I thought, you know what? Nobody wants to read my stuff because I know more than anyone else. I think that you guys wanted to read or follow my stuff because I try to make it simple and I break it down. So I thought, what is my concern? Take the complicated stuff, go do research, distill it into easy bite sized chunks for people to understand and it'll be fine. So that's what I did. I even cut a bunch of chapters out. This book ended up being bigger than the first book. For those of you that are looking at the video for this podcast, I'm holding up my first book and now the second book. And you can see that the second book is noticeably thicker than the first and that's even with the leading chapters. So I was on a bit of a time crunch because I, I delayed so long. I put a date on the calendar and said, I'm going to do it. As we got closer, I bet. Two weeks before the due date, I highlighted five chapters and hit the delete button. I mean it. Not because they were bad, but I was like, you know, these don't belong here. These don't make the book better. They, they don't need to be here. Deleted. I got rid of them and the book is still longer. And I hope it's everything people are looking for. So if you are one of the ones that has been waiting for the advanced book to come out, guess what? It's out. You can go get links to it. It's only on Amazon right now. It's going to be on my personal website in a couple weeks where I'll be selling autographed copies. But for right now, you can find all the links for everything@ryancollectner.com you can just go look in the books and see the advanced book. And I want to share with you the table of contents. Yeah, exciting reading. I know, sitting here listening to me reading a table of contents, but I want to share the table of contents so at least you understand what the book is about and hopefully you'll get some of my humor in here. So the first couple chapters. The first chapter is the same as the first book. It's number one firearm safety basic chapter. But it's important. So it's first. And I think it's almost verbatim from the first book. Sorry, you paid for that chapter twice. If you bought the second book, the second chapter, the title is this book is not for you. I thought that was kind of fun. What I do is I explain in the book that in that chapter that this book might not be for you, or at least not yet. And I go through and I explain how many people will have skipped over the first book because either they didn't know it existed because it's been 10 years now, or. Or they saw the word beginner on the first book and they're like, I'm not a beginner. I don't need that book. But I encourage people to go get the first book because I'm skipping a ton of concepts and terms. One, I wouldn't have the room for that. If I had to explain what a minute of angle was again and a mill was again, and what an angular measurement and how they worked was again and what the term dope means again. The book would be twice as long because I'd be having to rewrite so much of the first book, so much of the foundational stuff. But as a teacher, I can't stand teaching anything and not describing what it is. I can't stand saying, okay, so we're dealing with wind. We're going to measure how many mils it is without stopping and saying, by the way, mills are this. And this is how they work, and this is how you think of them. And doing all that. That's what I'm supposed to do as a teacher. But I purposefully didn't do that because it's kind of a trust situation here. I'm trusting that you already know what that is because you read the first book. So that's Another reason I say to go read the first one is not just because it could help you, but also I'm planning on explaining things to you as if you just got done reading the first book. So I don't want to explain it again because the book would be twice as long. You shouldn't have to pay for the same information twice. And I need to trust that you already know it and we're on the same page. So I thought that was a little fun. I put a quiz in there, we'll see how that's received. I debated on that for a little bit, whether I should put the quiz or not. And people would be offended if I was putting a quiz. But I put questions in there like, hey, do you know what this is? Can you explain this? Do you understand the concept of this? And then the answers for chapter two, I explain them and I say, hey, if you don't know these things, that's okay. Maybe you should go refresh the first book. Or at least if you don't know these things, understand that when you continue in this book, you're not going to be able to follow along and you're warned. So that was the second chapter, alright. Third chapter in the advanced long range shooting book is titled this book isn't advanced. I thought that was kind of cute too. And I go through and I explain, well, it's advanced, but it's not soup. It's not a book that you should read and end with, wow, that was so technical, amazing, crazy, like deep stuff. Because that's not what I do and that's not what you should do, so you should even worry about. Instead, I take more advanced topics and I explain them simply and I say, you should get done with this book and say, that wasn't that advanced. And if you do, then I think I succeeded. Well, the three sections of the book I did three sections. Again, start after chapter three. The first section is ammunition. The second section is external ballistics. And the third section is application. So in the ammunition section, starting with chapter four, I have caliber and bullet selection. Chapter five is ammunition variables and then loading equipment, then loading technique and then load development. So I go through everything you need to know about your choices you should make for certain calibers and pros and cons and why and bullet design and things like that. I go into what all the equipment is to how to load your own ammunition. I give as cursory of a look as I can while still trying to be complete on how to actually load ammunition in one chapter. And then I Tackle a monster of a chapter called Low Development. And I go through and I address the most common tests you guys have probably heard of, like the ladder test or the Saturday test or the OCW test. I explain how they work, I explain what they measure, I explain how to do them. And then I explain that you shouldn't use any of them. I say why they are not measuring what you think they're measuring. And then I explain what I think you should do instead. And I. I used some prose to back me up here because pros like professionals, not prose like poetry. I use some professionals to back me up because this is going to be the controversial chapter of the book for sure. I am definitely slaying some golden calves with this one. Into the next section with external ballistics. I started off with ballistic software and I go through and I compare my two favorite options for ballistic software. I talk about the features each of them has. I talk about the pros and cons of each and how to use them. And then I get into truing ballistic stuff like how you actually go in there and make the ballistic profile match what you have going on in reality. I think that's going to be helpful and worthwhile there. And then I get into the first of four chapters on wind. That's right, four chapters on wind. And the first one is why Wind Matters. And in that chapter I explain that I've never explained wind correctly. I've never done it justice. I've never done good enough with it. I've always said, oh, you'll know when you see it. You got to work harder. And I even call myself out. I think I used the phrase that was piss poor instruction and I regret doing it. So I'm going to teach it thoroughly in this way instead. And I take the deep dive. Four chapters again on wind. I think you're going to find value in the book. I think just those alone should be enough that should make people happy for the book. I talk about in the wind chapters, in the application section, jumping ahead a little bit, I have determining wind speed and direction. Then I have compensating for wind. And then I have gun number and Quick wind. And I talk about some kind of new theories or techniques that I've seen and noticed in Quick wind or the gun number system. I talk about how to really measure with, you know, whether you're using a Kestrel or I get a little bit mirage a little better. I get into the total effect of wind. I. I dive into it as much or more as I think I Should have. I hope you agree. Jumping back though to external ballistics after why wind Matters, I cover density altitude as its own chapter. I cover gravity ballistics, a really cool system made by Frank Galling and the Cypress Hyde team. And I have a chapter called funky bullet behavior where I discuss things like aerodynamic jump and spin drift. And for those of you that really want to geek out on it, I even get into how to calculate spin drift based on the stability of your bullet by hand. If you really want to, I'll show you how it can work. And then the application section, after I get the wind ones, we go into Moving targets as a chapter. I talk about how to measure, how to compensate, different methods for doing it, calculations you can do besides just using ballistic software. And I give ballistic software examples, of course. I even have a cool system I'm calling, you know, speed wind or speed wind. I can't even think of my brain right now. If you can see the video right now I'm exhausted getting this book done. I introduce in kind of a neat way, it's not new, other people have done it, but I introduced a new term in this book, I think four or five terms I introduce on, hey, we use the term gun number, but here's what I've noticed with gun number and how you can reduce the gun number and what it does for you, which I know other people have done, but there's no term that standardizes it all for us to talk about it. So I just a few times in the book I say, hey, I'll propose this new term. What do you guys think about using this as the term like base gun number versus reduced gun number, you know, things like that. Yeah. Because I have a new way of thinking about it. Let's get on the same page here. And then after Moving Targets, I have some more fun chapters. I have why your training sucks. That's the name of a chapter I have setting up the shot. And then the last chapter I have is ignore the reticle. Now if you follow me and the teaching that I've done, you should know how much I harp on focusing on the reticle. And now I just told you I introduced a chapter called ignore the reticle. And that's because I learned something from Kalan Wojcick from modern day Sniper that really changed my thinking on it. Now I still think you should focus on the reticle 90% or more of the time. I think you should. But there's an instance where I think it makes sense not to and it really resonated with me. So this book is an homage to Chris Way. A lot of credit to Chris Way on his wind stuff and how he looks at things. For kraftwind, it's a nod to Frank Galley with Gravity Ballistics. That whole chapter, there's a whole chapter with ignoring the reticle that I give Kaelin all the props. You know, I talk about Cal Zanton here. I talk about Eric Cortina and about the stuff I learned from him from reloading. So I hope you guys will see this as not a this is my way versus their way. But hey, here's one thing I've looked at and I've learned. And then also here's what these other pros in this space have done and giving them credit and talking about them and maybe encouraging you to go take training and extra stuff through them, too. So that's it. I'm gonna head out and go run some errands. I'm gonna go pick up the kids. I just wanted to jump on real quick and give you a teaser about the book, give you the shameless plug that's finally available. And maybe, just maybe, I'll see you next week on this podcast. I appreciate you guys.