Earlier this week, when the registration opened up, my team and I signed up for the 2017 ICFRA FCWC to be held in August at Connaught Range in Ottawa, Canada.

This is what we have been planning and training for during these last few years. It's a long road to get there, with lots of preparation and more training, but we are all looking forward to it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: NikonUser,

Go get 'em!!

Excellent! We all look forward to the reports.

RMD

Outstanding. I look forward to updates.

Thanks for the thoughts guys, we are getting excited (to put it mildly.)

Lots of stuff to do and prepare until we get there. I'll come back here once in a while as we progress and yes, I hope to ad more medals to our growing collection.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: NikonUser,

Cant wait for the reports!

Long road ahead, best of luck !

If you have time while there, check out the Canadian war museum. It's about 25 minutes East from Connaught.

How many hoops does it take to get your equipment into Canada and back? just curious.

Thanks for all the support here.

CQB60: Yes, it's a nice museum and it's located in Gatineau, QC. I hope to have the chance to visit it, again.

hrcjon: It's not as difficult as one would expect, especially with target rifles. From the Canadian side of things, you need to declare your rifle that is with you at customs and you get a form that describes the rifle and you pay some money for that license. The ammo that you bring in must be the one for your rifle, and you're allowed up to 5000 rounds. Once you have that form, you can travel around in Canada.

The FCWC management has stated you must present that completed form when you check in as a competitor.

Going back out, you need to return the form to the Canadian customs. I have to check what it takes to exit and return in to USA with a rifle. I will post all that as we go along.

Just a quick update; The entire team has been confirmed registered for the individuals and the team has been confirmed registered for the team matches.

So we are on the way to fulfilling the first step in the 3-step plan for winning.

May update; three months to go and we've had to redo the plans. We had a couple cancellations so we had to add a couple new team members. We've been doing some training, some as recently as this past weekend and it's looking great.

I'm going to be extending my stay over at Connaught and shoot the Canadian nationals as a warm-up for the worlds. So now I'm not flying, I will be driving there; no need for a new shipping rifle case.

Now, I am preparing my ammo for the next few local matches and then for the trip. Gotta prep and load about 600 cases in the next two months. I've been pointing bullets for the last few weeks.

June update. The itineraries are set. The equipment is getting its last fine tuning. I changed the rear rest from a regular size one to a Seb Bigfoot, with 20-some pounds of heavy sand. I tried it out at the last 1000yard match a couple weeks ago and it worked really well.

I have now started the processing of my ammo for the trip, and I will be bringing 500 rounds. Tonight I annealed 300 cases in 40 minutes with my Giraud to join the other 100 rounds already annealed. Over the next week, I will decap, resize and clean the 400 rounds. The last 100 of the lot will be processed after I fire the remaining 56 cartridges in the box at the next match.

The excitement is starting to build.

Pointing bullets? I thought you were a jlk guy. Do they not come pointed?

quote:

Originally posted by exx1976:
Pointing bullets? I thought you were a jlk guy. Do they not come pointed?

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but there is pointed, then pointed and finally pointed.

In the stickied thread I explained the circumstances that made me realize I had to add this to my loading regimen. In one word: competition.

I've used JLK bullets for almost 10 years now and they have always worked well for me. One of the things that I liked about them was their nice and tight meplat, compared to Bergers and especially Sierras. Now I understand some Sierras come better pointed that before, even though they swore up and down that meplats, regardless of their raggedness, was not important.

As I progressed in competitive circles, I discovered that every little bit counts. Not a big revelation, everyone knows that. This was the reason why I went from beam scale to CM to 250 and finally to the A&D f120i about 3 years ago.

This is why I anneal my cases at every loading, buy and use Lapua brass and so on and so forth.

When I switched to the 210s, my scores overall, kept increasing. Last year, just before the Nationals in Lodi, I shot a couple of 600 yard matches and scored several cleans: 200 with 10+ Xs. At 1000 yards, I kept having elevation issues, a shot would go low into the 9 ring. When I shot at Lodi, my buddy who was shooting the exact same bullet I was and alongside whom I had just shot the 600 cleans, was staying in the 10-ring and not dropping off like I was at certain times at 1000 yards.

The only difference between the loads is that he was pointing his JLKs and I was not. Closer inspection of the bullets showed that while most JLKs had very consistent, small meplats, there were some with a somewhat larger meplat.

So, I bit the bullet, so to speak, and I bought into the pointing thing. I set up my Whidden so as to bring the meplat down to virtually nothing. Now I point all the bullets, inspecting each one before and after. Most times, the meplat is fine before and smaller after, but every so often I find one that really gets a good squeeze of the meplat. This step just insures overall consistency.

At the match right after I started pointing, I noticed that I didn't drop a point to vertical the entire match and it's been like that since.

The pointing eliminated that last little bit of inconsistency. It's nice to have totally consistent ammo in matches and it has allowed me to score better and win some matches again.

I just can't afford to leave a single point on the loading table. There's nothing worse than making a great wind call and getting a 9 out the bottom.

I know what you mean. I made a great wind call in a switchy 15mph tailwind this past weekend at a target at 1030 and came in low. I was pissed.

I have a Whidden pointing die, but I have refrained thus far since I don't know what it will do to my bc. Changing any little part of my setup is a big problem because I need to be able to know what my bc is to have accurate dope charts. Having to hit targets at various distances from 30-1400 yards, on the first attempt, makes data that much more valuable.

I totally get that. For me, the difference in BC, whatever it may be, is incidental and I can easily correct for that. In your case, it's imperative that you have that value down cold.

I gained 3/8MOA, I remember the 3 clicks on the scope during that test string, jumping from non-pointed to pointed bullets. Put another way, I gained 10 points on the G7 BC, from .340 to .350, so about 3%; that was just a bonus, consistency was my goal.

I remember reading that gains from pointing ranged from 2% to 7% or more, depending on the bullet.

I just have to say Good Luck Nikon User.

Also, that pointing discussion is fascinating to a non long range shooter like me. Glad you discovered the problem!

quote:

Originally posted by NikonUser:
I totally get that. For me, the difference in BC, whatever it may be, is incidental and I can easily correct for that. In your case, it's imperative that you have that value down cold.

I gained 3/8MOA, I remember the 3 clicks on the scope during that test string, jumping from non-pointed to pointed bullets. Put another way, I gained 10 points on the G7 BC, from .340 to .350, so about 3%; that was just a bonus, consistency was my goal.

I remember reading that gains from pointing ranged from 2% to 7% or more, depending on the bullet.

One of these days I'm going to have to take a chrono and some pointed rounds with me to a match. Then I can sort it out in the practice range.

The big problem is I don't have local, regular access to anything over 840 yards, so figuring this stuff out isn't that easy. I sure would like to, though, because free bc is free bc.

Good luck Nikon!

I've worked at the old Nortel campus about a mile from there and didn't know that range even existed.