Shooters News for the Minn Area - Apr 6, 2013

The Week Ahead

   This weekend offers both Prone and Position shooters a great opportunity.  The Mpls. Rifle Club  will be hosting the Robert Sandager  300 meter State Championship.  The prone 300 m champ matches will be held on Saturday, Apr 6, and then on Sunday, Apr 7, 3P shooters will have their go at a State Title. 
    Rain or shine, these matches are fired from indoor firing positions on Elect Targets 300 m away, while the shots are plotted on the computer monitor beside each firing position.   Click Here for prone  match program and Click Here for the 3P Champ program.  This match will tune you up for the upcoming Mid-Range and Long Range matches.  Don't miss this

The Berger Bullet SW OTC Nationals are being held here in Phoenix this coming Thursday thru Sunday. The weather forecast is for warm temps, low wind and humidity.   These conditions should make for some great matches.  I'll be there all 4 days, starting with the 600 yd prone 3x20 on Thursday. and then the 3 days of OTC matches.  If anyone is coming out this way for the matches --- We'll see you there!

Two Weeks Out
300 Meter International From: Brian Shiffman

"Subject: April 300 Meter MRC Match Sunday Apr 14

 Here we are again, waiting for spring to spring.  We may be into fall before too long, Yuk.

But, let’s give it a try.  The MRC 300 meter match will be held this Sunday, April 14 with two relays scheduled; the first goes off at 10 AM and the second at noon.

No expanding or fragmenting bullets.  Only match or full metal jacket bullets; no muzzle brakes but flash hiders are OK.  A-Max bullets are NOT allowed. They are fine for paper but have a jacket that will fragment and shred our targets when it hits.

 Pick your shooting class: 3-Position, Prone (sling and iron sights), Offhand (iron sights), F-Open or F-TR.  If you use optical sights then you are in one of the two F classes, depending upon caliber and type of support used.  You can shoot    F-TR class with a service rifle with a scope and a sling if you choose.  Shooting is governed by ISSF rules except we allow NRA shooting jackets.  As a club match, we have some liberty.  We have been evaluating starting a Prone with optical sight class but no final decision has been made.  That would be OK for a club match but would not be acceptable for NRA approved or sanctioned matches, of course.
   Fee is $20 for the 60 shot match; Electronic targets, so, NO PIT DUTY and the match runs quickly, 3 strings of 20 rounds in succession.  Once the command is given to start the match, each shooter is on their own to finish within the 1:35 minutes.

Go to http://edfpages.com/mgfc/match.php to register yourself.  Read the page instructions.  Fill in the boxes and make selections from the drop down lists.  There is room for only 14 shooters per relay.  The box at the top of the list shows the number of shooters for each relay.

If you need to cancel you have to contact me so that I can use the magic pixie dust to delete your entry and make it available for someone else."

Brian D. Shiffman shiff004@umn.edu   

Notes:
Capt. Bob Peasley has sent us another in the series of articles he has written on the subject of shooting and shooting competitions. 
From; Capt. Bob  

                                                                                                                    Capt. Bob's nifty gun.

Powder Shortage??
    "As we all know there continues to be a serious rifle powder & primer shortage in the country.

And if not a serious shortage then at least there is a serious price gouging issue.  I recently ran across a 4 year old 8 lb. keg of IMR 4320 at the 4 year old price. In my experience

there is nothing wrong with 4 year old powder if the keg is unopened.  IMR 4320 is all I shot many years ago in my first 223 bolt gun.  It seemed like it should be suitable in the 6BR but there is no data I can find for the 4320/6BR combination.  Thus it seemed it was my sacred duty to create some data.

I shoot 6BR for OTC & MRP and have excellent loads for heavy bullets (105-108 gr.) at 5 & 600 yards.  I shoot Hornady 87 gr. HPBT # 2442 & Sierra 95 gr. MK # 1537 for 2 & 300 yards OTC.  So I decided to work up a load for light bullets for the OTC shorter lines first. All bullets were Moly coated.

My high tech testing was as follows.  It seemed that 26.0 gr. of IMR 4320 with the 95 gr. Sierra would definitely be safe. So I loaded 1 round with that load, stepped outside and fired into the nearest snow bank.  The result was a loud bang with no pressure signs on the case or primer. So I increased the load in 1/2 gr. increments till I got to 29.5 gr. and kept blasting the snow bank. The 29.5 load of IMR 4320 seemed like it should register similar velocity to the same charge of Varget or N140. So I loaded 10 rounds with 95 Sierra, 29.5 gr. 4320, 205M primer in Lapua brass & set up the chronograph. Those 10 shots averaged 2800 FPS exactly with a spread of 13 and SD of 06. I shot iron sights off rest at 100 yards which resulted in a 5/8" group. During the testing it was a below average temperature of 48 deg.

I then fired 13 rounds with 30.0 gr. and the rest the same. That load resulted in an average of 2847 FPS with a spread of 43, SD of 15 and a 3/4" group.  There were absolutely no pressure signs in either load.  I have no idea why the .5 gr. heavier load had a spread 3 times higher.  And we all know if I repeated the test today the results could be reversed.  Anyway, the bottom line is that based on 2 very brief tests it seems that IMR 4320 is definitely suitable for the 6BR.  Time & snow banks permitting I may try shooting some data with the 107-108 gr. bullets.  

HOLDHARD,"  

Bob 

Thanks Bob for sharing that with us.

Oh, by the Way 
I did get over to the Lapua .22 rimfire test facility here in Mesa, Az this winter. Its only 3/4 mile from the house so I couldn't miss that opportunity.  Darell Stettmeier and I tested about 40 lots of ammo in my Anshutz 2013, and also in my M-52D Winchester.  Namo Tactical has a 100 yd test tunnel with a bed-rock mounted vice to hold the rifle. Shots are plotted at 50m and 100m on computer moniters with statistics posted to measure group sizes and velocity deviations.  After about 6 hrs of testing, we found out that my rifle with the Shillen Rachet Groove barrel loved the Lapua OSP pistol ammo.  As it turns out, the Win 52D also shot this ammo the best and so now there are two cases of this precious stuff residing in my garage and waiting for next years "March Madness" small bore season here in Phoenix.
   I was also able to test the 3 lots of ammo that I bought over the counter the last couple of years. These lots were SK Rifle Match,  and I am darned lucky to say that all 3 lots turned out to test well, and I have no reason to suspect this ammo if I get bad shot once in a while.  However, that being said,  even the best ammo will not always print a group the size of the x ring

Here the print out says that this lot of ammo had a minimum outside circle diameter  of 14.08mm, that contained all the shots, at 50m and a shot center point standard deviation (DHH) of only 3.3 mm  (this is a 7.9 mm group measured the standard way of distance apart of centers of widest holes).  This 15 mm circle of shots will fit nicely into the 26mm 10ring of the NRA 50 yard targets. but you can see that even a perfectly controlled rifle clamped into a rock solid machine rest, and firing great ammo will still not drill that one hole group that you expect --when you shoot out of a rifle sling in the wind.  This ammo testing taught me two things----
 1. when I shoot a group that looks like the above, I am doing the best the rifle can do. Its not going to do better unless all the errors I make in shooting the shots happen to go the right way to the middle. 
 2. When you have a facility available to test ammo in your small bore rifle before buying it, you are crazy to not use that facility.  While price is a fairly good indicator of possible future performance of small bore ammo, it is not a guaranteed indicator.  Ammo is expensive and you could make a big mistake buying over the counter. 
  It's easy to test -- Darrel will do it for you--  just send him the rifle.  Its just that simple. They now have a purpose built Anchutz 2013 machine rest that bolts to the flat bottom action.  

Now --How did this ammo work in the WildCat matches??   Darn good!  I had high X counts after the first days windy match.  In the last Any sight match I really shot just for Xs and got most of them and was actually hitting fully inside the X circle.  My last two targets were better than the test tunnel targets. 

Well, That's all folks!

Dont forget----  300 m State Champ prone match this weekend. 

Hawkeye