- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
.308 is fine but the VTR isn't exactly a precision platform. Light barrel, injection molded stock. Hate the brake on them, myself, too.
- DAA
- DAA
Long Range Shooting
- Thread starter glockman
- Start date
glockman
I hate Jeep trucks
- Location
- Pleasant Grove
I'm not sure if this is of interest to anyone, but I'll keep putting it out there on the odd chance.
So far I've only got a couple days of loading and shooting in.
I started out with Hogdon H4350, CCI 450 primers and Hornady 140 and 147 gr ELD M's. Started at 41 grains in both bullets and stepped in .5 gr increments.
I shot them on a slightly windy day and it's obvious that I'm a little rusty shooting precision off a bench and it's taken a few minutes to get back to a place I feel like I'm not impacting the groups more than the load.
Those loads shot pretty well with a standard deviation in velocity of sub 10 and several of them were sub 3 all shooting 3 shot groups.
Next set was same bullets/ primer/ brass and seating depth but we switched to Winchester StaBALL powder starting at 43 grn. About the same groups with the 147's outshooting the 140's in both powders. Again, the StaBall SD was all sub 10.
I did have to bump the seating depth back a little to get the cartridges to fit in the magazine. We started at jam -0.002" but had to seat them 0.026" deeper than jam to fit the magazine.
Next round of development will be back to H4350 with the 147's and some Barnes 145's and play with the charge weight. Even at 42.5gr of 4350 on a 90 degree day I have zero pressure signs.
These are with the staball
So far I've only got a couple days of loading and shooting in.
I started out with Hogdon H4350, CCI 450 primers and Hornady 140 and 147 gr ELD M's. Started at 41 grains in both bullets and stepped in .5 gr increments.
I shot them on a slightly windy day and it's obvious that I'm a little rusty shooting precision off a bench and it's taken a few minutes to get back to a place I feel like I'm not impacting the groups more than the load.
Those loads shot pretty well with a standard deviation in velocity of sub 10 and several of them were sub 3 all shooting 3 shot groups.
Next set was same bullets/ primer/ brass and seating depth but we switched to Winchester StaBALL powder starting at 43 grn. About the same groups with the 147's outshooting the 140's in both powders. Again, the StaBall SD was all sub 10.
I did have to bump the seating depth back a little to get the cartridges to fit in the magazine. We started at jam -0.002" but had to seat them 0.026" deeper than jam to fit the magazine.
Next round of development will be back to H4350 with the 147's and some Barnes 145's and play with the charge weight. Even at 42.5gr of 4350 on a 90 degree day I have zero pressure signs.
These are with the staball
xjtony
Well-Known Member
- Location
- Grantsville, Ut
Looks like you might be around a node between 4 and 5 in the pic. That's a great SD with all of them though. I've got a bottle of Enduron that I want to try with some 123g Nosler CCs.
glockman
I hate Jeep trucks
- Location
- Pleasant Grove
Yep. Bottom is 147's left to right increasing charge weight. So I'm going to increment up a little more and find the node upper limit, or the pressure limit.
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
Load tuning was a hobby unto itself for me for many years. I only "long range" tuned a few barrels, though. Vast majority of my tuning has been for point blank precision. There are some differences in approach.
I can't say much from the results so far. Other than, the rifle does seem to be saying it prefers the 147's.
What was the distance on this? Those are decent 300 yard groups.
Find max. You want to know. And best to find it while the weather is still good and warm.
Three shot groups are fine for scanning and especially on a rig that the barrel warms up quickly. But for final tuning you'll need to pound out some ten or twenty shot groups. ES and SD for three shots doesn't move my meter. I need to see numbers on longer strings. Long range steel (and even more so, long range varmints), imply long strings without cleaning or cooling. You need to see if the load falls apart under a long string. Sometimes the best short string load isn't the best long string load.
You don't mention wind flags, but I'm guessing you are using them? Load tuning on a breezy day is almost a waste of components and barrel life without them - even for point blank range tuning. And learning the flags is more important than rifle or load tuning anyway. A missed call on conditions is going to cause a couple of MOA miss at a thousand yards. Maybe a more than a couple MOA miss. Load tuning is about squeezing out the last 1/3 or 1/4 or even 1/8 MOA. Feels good, gives confidence, but a 1/4 MOA rifle and load driven by someone not excellent at reading conditions will do much more poorly than a 1 MOA rifle driven by someone who can read and adapt to conditions.
I'm a fan of ladder testing for quickly finding bullet, powder, max and nodes all at once pretty quickly. You'll want to do them at 300 or more yards, on a calm day, with wind flags.
How is the concentricity?
- DAA
I can't say much from the results so far. Other than, the rifle does seem to be saying it prefers the 147's.
What was the distance on this? Those are decent 300 yard groups.
Find max. You want to know. And best to find it while the weather is still good and warm.
Three shot groups are fine for scanning and especially on a rig that the barrel warms up quickly. But for final tuning you'll need to pound out some ten or twenty shot groups. ES and SD for three shots doesn't move my meter. I need to see numbers on longer strings. Long range steel (and even more so, long range varmints), imply long strings without cleaning or cooling. You need to see if the load falls apart under a long string. Sometimes the best short string load isn't the best long string load.
You don't mention wind flags, but I'm guessing you are using them? Load tuning on a breezy day is almost a waste of components and barrel life without them - even for point blank range tuning. And learning the flags is more important than rifle or load tuning anyway. A missed call on conditions is going to cause a couple of MOA miss at a thousand yards. Maybe a more than a couple MOA miss. Load tuning is about squeezing out the last 1/3 or 1/4 or even 1/8 MOA. Feels good, gives confidence, but a 1/4 MOA rifle and load driven by someone not excellent at reading conditions will do much more poorly than a 1 MOA rifle driven by someone who can read and adapt to conditions.
I'm a fan of ladder testing for quickly finding bullet, powder, max and nodes all at once pretty quickly. You'll want to do them at 300 or more yards, on a calm day, with wind flags.
How is the concentricity?
- DAA
xjtony
Well-Known Member
- Location
- Grantsville, Ut
What digital tools do you use for load development and shooting in general? I use Range Buddy for measuring groups. For speed data I just have a cheap Caldwell Chrono but I'd like to upgrade to a Magnetospeed at some point. For DOPE I use Ballistic ARC, and highly recommend it for anyone who wants to try long range shooting but doesn't want to spend a ton.
A target from my last range day analyzed by Range Buddy. The date isn't right but it's not to far off ( it's been a while since I've hit the range lol). This load shoots really well from my 16 inch grendel. It's too fast for my 24 incher though unfortunately.
A target from my last range day analyzed by Range Buddy. The date isn't right but it's not to far off ( it's been a while since I've hit the range lol). This load shoots really well from my 16 inch grendel. It's too fast for my 24 incher though unfortunately.
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
I'm an old analog bastage...
I still measure groups with a caliper. If I want something real close to true center to center, I measure a couple lone bullet holes to determine paper stretch. A .224 bullet never makes a .224 hole. Paper almost always stretches at least a little. I usually use targets I printed out on the cheapest paper on the shelf and depending on humidity and such, the stretch can be quite a damn bit. I can see the app you use takes care of all that automagically
. I like my calipers though.
This was a first range session scanning, on my .20 Dasher mongrel parts rifle build.
You'll see, I'm not even bothering to try and get a C-T-C measurement. I'm just scanning, all I really care about is how these groups compare to each other, so outside to outside is quick and dirty and good enough. The two top groups are three shots, but the two bottom are four shots, even though, bottom right looks like three - one of them just went though the same hole as another though.
When things are really humming on a really accurate barrel, you have to make a lone hole to measure for stretch on purpose. The rest of them are just printing bugholes.
Those are four each, five shot groups (with two different loads, I chose the bottom one for a working load). The bottom right mothball isn't actually a "group". I was using that mothball as a sighter to check conditions before putting a bullet into the group I was working. I measured it anyway, as my aim point was the same on all those shots and I was interested in what that came up as. Compared to my groups where if the sighter landed one side of the line, I held the other side of the line for group - or waited for the wind flags to lay down again. This shows what even a very light breeze can do to groups - the wind was barely moving that day. I attributed the vertical in it to mirage off the barrel (despite a barrel length mirage shield) and also held off for that in the groups. Oh, and I had to make lone hole to measure paper stretch. so those are fly guts around the lone bullet hole, lol!
For dope, well, I'm pretty lame... Again, I'm a short ranger. Dope isn't very critical for what I do. If I can get the vertical right on a 500 yard shot from a clean cold barrel and then again later from the same barrel when it's hot and dirty, I'm happy as a clam. But, back in the long ago time when I flirted with long range for a couple of years, a desktop windows app from Sierra was state of the art and that's what I used for everything, for a long time. For quite a few years now though, I have relied on the JBM Ballistics website (for free). It does a lot more than that old Sierra program did. I don't run dope in the field or at the range. I print old fashioned dope cards and if I really always want it with me I tape the card to the stock. But usually just carry them in the MTM ammo boxes with the ammo.
Load data has always been huge to me. At some point about 15-20 years ago I switched to putting all my load data in spreadsheets. But a good portion of all my data is still in the old Sinclair Int'l data log books I used for many a year before Excel. I've always been 100% data driven for load tuning though. Even when I very first started out as a child. I used to use colored markers on graph paper to plot graphs of my A/B load tests when I was a kid.
This was from working load testing with my .17 Predator using then brand new to the market "new" Lapua Match .223 brass (I used to get pre-production samples of all new Lapua brass, my buddy Steve was the US distributor...). I kept load work super short and sweet on this one as it's a hot rod barrel burning sumbich. But what you are looking at is a ten shot group fired with a single piece of brass. That's typically how I do a final pressure check. If a primer pocket is still tight at "however many" loads (acceptable to me varies greatly with application...), I call pressure good to go. I put a lot of work into prepping my brass and I HATE losing any. Whether by dropping and can't find, or loosening up a primer pocket before it's time from a warm load.
Here's a ladder test on a point blank range prairie dog load for my first .22BR. Fired at 300 yards. I was testing 50 Vmax vs. 50 B-tip. Every shot a different powder charge. I just turned the target over between tests. You can see the Vmax totally smoked the B-tip load for vertical in this test with this powder (H4895). With the Vmax, 11 shots with 11 different powder charges at 300 yards printed a 1.25" (.4 MOA) group. With some really nice load clumps. That's the bottom load, from the one holer tuning session posted above.
As I said earlier, I have always liked the ladder test for definitively beginning to sort the pepper from the fly shit. When I first learned of it, it was called the Audette method. Named after Creighton Audette. He used to write some killer tech for Precision Shooting magazine, way, way back in the day.
- DAA
I still measure groups with a caliper. If I want something real close to true center to center, I measure a couple lone bullet holes to determine paper stretch. A .224 bullet never makes a .224 hole. Paper almost always stretches at least a little. I usually use targets I printed out on the cheapest paper on the shelf and depending on humidity and such, the stretch can be quite a damn bit. I can see the app you use takes care of all that automagically
. I like my calipers though.This was a first range session scanning, on my .20 Dasher mongrel parts rifle build.
You'll see, I'm not even bothering to try and get a C-T-C measurement. I'm just scanning, all I really care about is how these groups compare to each other, so outside to outside is quick and dirty and good enough. The two top groups are three shots, but the two bottom are four shots, even though, bottom right looks like three - one of them just went though the same hole as another though.
When things are really humming on a really accurate barrel, you have to make a lone hole to measure for stretch on purpose. The rest of them are just printing bugholes.
Those are four each, five shot groups (with two different loads, I chose the bottom one for a working load). The bottom right mothball isn't actually a "group". I was using that mothball as a sighter to check conditions before putting a bullet into the group I was working. I measured it anyway, as my aim point was the same on all those shots and I was interested in what that came up as. Compared to my groups where if the sighter landed one side of the line, I held the other side of the line for group - or waited for the wind flags to lay down again. This shows what even a very light breeze can do to groups - the wind was barely moving that day. I attributed the vertical in it to mirage off the barrel (despite a barrel length mirage shield) and also held off for that in the groups. Oh, and I had to make lone hole to measure paper stretch. so those are fly guts around the lone bullet hole, lol!
For dope, well, I'm pretty lame... Again, I'm a short ranger. Dope isn't very critical for what I do. If I can get the vertical right on a 500 yard shot from a clean cold barrel and then again later from the same barrel when it's hot and dirty, I'm happy as a clam. But, back in the long ago time when I flirted with long range for a couple of years, a desktop windows app from Sierra was state of the art and that's what I used for everything, for a long time. For quite a few years now though, I have relied on the JBM Ballistics website (for free). It does a lot more than that old Sierra program did. I don't run dope in the field or at the range. I print old fashioned dope cards and if I really always want it with me I tape the card to the stock. But usually just carry them in the MTM ammo boxes with the ammo.
Load data has always been huge to me. At some point about 15-20 years ago I switched to putting all my load data in spreadsheets. But a good portion of all my data is still in the old Sinclair Int'l data log books I used for many a year before Excel. I've always been 100% data driven for load tuning though. Even when I very first started out as a child. I used to use colored markers on graph paper to plot graphs of my A/B load tests when I was a kid.
This was from working load testing with my .17 Predator using then brand new to the market "new" Lapua Match .223 brass (I used to get pre-production samples of all new Lapua brass, my buddy Steve was the US distributor...). I kept load work super short and sweet on this one as it's a hot rod barrel burning sumbich. But what you are looking at is a ten shot group fired with a single piece of brass. That's typically how I do a final pressure check. If a primer pocket is still tight at "however many" loads (acceptable to me varies greatly with application...), I call pressure good to go. I put a lot of work into prepping my brass and I HATE losing any. Whether by dropping and can't find, or loosening up a primer pocket before it's time from a warm load.
Here's a ladder test on a point blank range prairie dog load for my first .22BR. Fired at 300 yards. I was testing 50 Vmax vs. 50 B-tip. Every shot a different powder charge. I just turned the target over between tests. You can see the Vmax totally smoked the B-tip load for vertical in this test with this powder (H4895). With the Vmax, 11 shots with 11 different powder charges at 300 yards printed a 1.25" (.4 MOA) group. With some really nice load clumps. That's the bottom load, from the one holer tuning session posted above.
As I said earlier, I have always liked the ladder test for definitively beginning to sort the pepper from the fly shit. When I first learned of it, it was called the Audette method. Named after Creighton Audette. He used to write some killer tech for Precision Shooting magazine, way, way back in the day.
- DAA
Last edited:
- Location
- Bountiful, land of rocks
What do your .17 run at? I bet that’s a hot little bugger?
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
30's at 4100 fps.
- DAA
- DAA
- Location
- Bountiful, land of rocks
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
I use 55's in my 6/284 at almost 4300 fps. And 39's in the .20 Dasher at closer to 4400 fps. I like flat midrange. Takes the guess work and hold off out of it. Eats barrels though.
- DAA
- DAA
glockman
I hate Jeep trucks
- Location
- Pleasant Grove
Love the pics Dave.
We were using wind flags on the first session and on the second, one of the bench rest guys was there and had his wind flowers up which are awesome. I was doing my best to read wind and send rounds in low or now wind but like I said, I've been out of the precision stuff for a long time and getting used to slow and precise after fast and furious is admittedly taking me a minute. Sadly, all these groups were at 100 yards so I don't have anything to write home about.
Not sure what model chronograph my dad has but it's blue tooth and pretty damned cool.
I've read about the Audette ladder it seems to be a pretty common method and I believe its kind of what I'm doing but with 3 shot rungs, trying to find the node. I think 2 shot rungs is pretty common to get repeatable data and eliminate outliers. There seems to be a lot of opinions on if you need the second shot and the third like I'm doing is probably a waste but it's getting me trigger time so there is that. Your method obviously produces results and you can't argue with those results.
I'm no expert on any of this and I'm just trying to learn from the old man so his 10k hours aren't lost when his memory goes. It's also a really good reason to spend the day at the range with him which is as rewarding as the shooting.
We were using wind flags on the first session and on the second, one of the bench rest guys was there and had his wind flowers up which are awesome. I was doing my best to read wind and send rounds in low or now wind but like I said, I've been out of the precision stuff for a long time and getting used to slow and precise after fast and furious is admittedly taking me a minute. Sadly, all these groups were at 100 yards so I don't have anything to write home about.
Not sure what model chronograph my dad has but it's blue tooth and pretty damned cool.
I've read about the Audette ladder it seems to be a pretty common method and I believe its kind of what I'm doing but with 3 shot rungs, trying to find the node. I think 2 shot rungs is pretty common to get repeatable data and eliminate outliers. There seems to be a lot of opinions on if you need the second shot and the third like I'm doing is probably a waste but it's getting me trigger time so there is that. Your method obviously produces results and you can't argue with those results.
I'm no expert on any of this and I'm just trying to learn from the old man so his 10k hours aren't lost when his memory goes. It's also a really good reason to spend the day at the range with him which is as rewarding as the shooting.
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
My memory is going already...
I have a magnetospeed and it’s fine but I don’t like having anything attached to the barrel for real tuning or zeroing. So it kind of sucks in that way. Would have a labradar but they only go up to 3900 FPS so I couldn’t use one very often.
- DAA
I have a magnetospeed and it’s fine but I don’t like having anything attached to the barrel for real tuning or zeroing. So it kind of sucks in that way. Would have a labradar but they only go up to 3900 FPS so I couldn’t use one very often.
- DAA
- Location
- Bountiful, land of rocks
So it's optic time for me. I brought a Vortex home and put it on the rifle. Just couldn't do it. Took it back to the retailer today. I have $800-1000 earmarked (then it's time to start plugging $ into the Buick and it's Kentucky trip in May) for the optic. I like the Leupold name but am not in love with the reticles available.
There's some solid deals on the US Optics stuff out there. Some of the lower end NightForce stuff is in that price range. Are Athlon's still a good risk?
There's some solid deals on the US Optics stuff out there. Some of the lower end NightForce stuff is in that price range. Are Athlon's still a good risk?
I have a few Athlons, their upper teir Ares/Midas/Cronus stuff is on par with the Vortex. From talking with a couple dealers and reps most optics in the Athlon/Vortex price range are all made in the same Chinese factory, higher end is usually Japanese but still same mfg.
Another one to check out is Hawke, similar price range but they have a little more bang for the buck IMHO. Hawke gives you some really nice throw rings, aluminum flip caps and see thru heavy hash marks.
Another one to check out is Hawke, similar price range but they have a little more bang for the buck IMHO. Hawke gives you some really nice throw rings, aluminum flip caps and see thru heavy hash marks.
glockman
I hate Jeep trucks
- Location
- Pleasant Grove
Well I haven't shot the 6.5 too much in the last couple of years. I did take it to Price and hit the 1k yard milk jug on a shitty windy day this summer. My dad got a bore scope and we found some pretty bad spots, several of them, in this barrel. So much for my tack driver, but it is functionally accurate.
My boy got a gun for Christmas so we went up day after to sight it in and I threw the 6.5 in. It was cold and ball powder doesn't do well in the cold so my groups weren't very impressive but we had a blast and I tagged a 1/3 man silhouette at 930 on the second shot. Good times. My old man built this 6GT and has been having a fit with load development.
He shot some groups and I think he's happy with this load. That thumb is next to a 3 shot group at 100 yards.
I really need to shoot more. It's awesome to get 3 generations out to the range.
My boy got a gun for Christmas so we went up day after to sight it in and I threw the 6.5 in. It was cold and ball powder doesn't do well in the cold so my groups weren't very impressive but we had a blast and I tagged a 1/3 man silhouette at 930 on the second shot. Good times. My old man built this 6GT and has been having a fit with load development.
He shot some groups and I think he's happy with this load. That thumb is next to a 3 shot group at 100 yards.
I really need to shoot more. It's awesome to get 3 generations out to the range.
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
I'm always way more interested in the bad groups than the good ones! If those groups are both the same load, I'd not be too pleased. If they are not the same load, I'd need to see quite a few more groups with the second one before I was satisfied.
Meaning no offense! But two, three shot groups, mean about diddly to me when I'm working up a load. Except, if one of them is bad. That I take as meaningful. A single good three shot group, meh, whatever. A single bad one? That gets my attention.
- DAA
Meaning no offense! But two, three shot groups, mean about diddly to me when I'm working up a load. Except, if one of them is bad. That I take as meaningful. A single good three shot group, meh, whatever. A single bad one? That gets my attention.
- DAA
glockman
I hate Jeep trucks
- Location
- Pleasant Grove
Consistency is absolutely king. The left group was cold bore. The right one was the third or fourth with each getting better as the barrel temp stabilized. I think he only had 15 or 20 rounds of this test load. The rest of the ammo we shot was fire forming.
Which cleaning camp are you in @DAA, always clean or never clean the barrel?
- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
Always clean!
Kinda depends on the application though. But the fire breathing hot rods need to be kept clean else carbon ring.
- DAA
Kinda depends on the application though. But the fire breathing hot rods need to be kept clean else carbon ring.
- DAA