Someone here, maybe all involved with the exception of Rizzini who I'm certain already knows, need to realize that "pattern testing" and testing for regulation are two entirely different things. "Pattern testing" is not a blanket statement that covers regulation as well, unless it is specified as such in the description.
How so?
Since the publication of Jones and the proven fact that shotgun patterns are random in shot distribution, 'pattern testing' for pattern quality (like Oberfell and Thompson did) would seem to be pointless.
This leaves us with pattern size at a given range and point of impact.
Since testing anything for confirmation of quality requires a standard to test against, certainly a reference load is chosen and the gun pointed in a repeatable fashion at some target that would record both the pattern size and point of impact.
The data would be there and instantly available after one shot from each barrel.
