Reload cannons in Elite Dangerous

Question

My Asp Explorer in Elite: Dangerous has four (4) cannons outfitted on it. Sometimes I want to reload my cannons' clips manually, so that I'm prepared for a battle. I can't find a keyboard shortcut for this, or the ability to map this to a key binding in the game settings. How can I manually reload my cannons?

Answer 1

I believe there are really only two ways to do this:

1. Fire the cannon(s) until the clip is empty, so that it reloads the clip from your main ammo supply.
2. Use synthesis (right panel) to reload the main ammo supply using Nickel, Carbon and Sulfur materials. This will refill about half of the main ammo supply and I believe also reloads the clip.

Engineering (requires Horizons)

There are also ways to mitigate this issue with Engineering.

You can engineer the "High Capacity Magazine" mod, which increases the clip size and ammo size (at cost of slower reload). Higher grades have a greater effect.

All of the Cannon mods have a "Auto Loader" experimental effect possible. This reduces the clip size, but it will automatically reload the clip. Your best bet to get a specific experimental effect is to get up to grade 3 or better with the engineer and then roll the mod you want and "spend" a couple ranks to get an experimental effect and to get the specific experimental effect you want.