The PRS match was good. Me, not so much. Poor timing with a sinus infection didn't help, but I have nobody to blame but me for inexperience with 90 second stages and lots of positional shooting. I did OK on stages where we got to lay on our bellies. But the other stages....

I was wind beotch for the roof stage, with targets at 675 and 730 yards, near-to-far, 4 pairs of shots. Wind on the prior stage was effectively 7-8 mph from the right. Since this stage's targets were a bit further out, I held for 10 mph.
- Misses to the left on the first pair. Figured the wind was around of 13 mph.
- Held 15 mph for the second pair. Just missed to the left. Figured the wind was 18-ish mph.
- Held 20 mph for the third pair. Misses to the left. Figured the wind was maybe 22-23 mph.
- Held 22 mph for the fourth pair. Misses to the left. Estimated the wind around 25.
0 for 8 in around 90 seconds. Yeah, this day's going well. IIRC wind dropped back to the 10 to 15-ish mph ballpark for the rest of our squad.

The final stage, which offgrid describes above, was likely the most enjoyable of the match.

Today's conditions weren't the best for precision shooting. For most of day winds bounced from 5-20 mph, generally East to Southeast. When I tired of ranch duties, I decided to just deal with it and shoot the 22lr rifle.

I set a 4", 5", and 6" steel combo at 105 yards. Then a couple of 8" plates at 135 yards. I shot from a tripod, kneeling position, with a pump pillow for rear support. With the exception of the 4" circle, all targets were pretty easy to hit -- just a matter of calling the wind correctly and breaking the shot smoothly. Winds holds were between right edge of target and half a plate right of target.

I started with dialing elevations, then switched to holding elevation. I felt the best practice was to do the following as quickly as possible, with no dialing whatsoever:
- load 5 rounds per mag
- drop from standing to kneeling behind the rifle
- fire one shot at each of the 105 yard targets
- move to the 135 yard targets (maybe 35-40 degrees rotation to the left) and fire one shot at each of them
- stand up, reload, and repeat

Hopefully, variations in drills like this will improve my future PRS match performance.

Heading out to Arizona for the Owens Armory Sickness for Distance Battle Royale NRL Match. Wish me luck Guys.

quote:

Originally posted by Alpine:
Heading out to Arizona for the Owens Armory Sickness for Distance Battle Royale NRL Match. Wish me luck Guys.

Shoot fast, don't miss. Easy Peasy!

Kick ass, and be wary of any special olympics stages.

I decided it was time to make a tomato stake out of my original 6.5 Creedmoor barrel. It had 3,236 rounds down the tube and still shot well at 100 yards. I was becoming concerned about accuracy at distance, and that the barrel might become seriously toast in the middle of a match this summer.



Bartlein 5R, M24 contour, finished at 26", threaded and capped.




I suspect it will be easy to recall the caliber of this rifle and who chambered it. I will try to run a few rounds down the pipe this weekend.

That looks great, fritz. Didn't know Mile High did custom work, good to know.

Yep, they do all sorts of gunsmith work. The 'smith who did this barrel change is Fritz (his real name, whereas my name on this site comes from my ski team nick name). The real Fritz used to work out of a shop in Aurora -- where he built 3 ARs for me, did a few pistol action jobs (1911 and Sig), and tinkered with a few of my other long guns. IMO the real Fritz knows his stuff.

FWIW, Mile High had 4 custom build bolt actions rifles on their wall earlier a few days ago. I handled one of them and it was nice. Dangerous....got me thinkin'.....

Interesting, didn't know that. I know Fritz, he threaded several of my barrels, in his old shop.

For a while, after we met a Colorado SIGforum shoot, I thought "fritz was Fritz". I now know better

The new barrel shoots; the nut behind the butt could be a bit tighter....



I had 5-12 mph winds from my 3 o'clock -- enough to slightly move both me and the target.

This Bartlein barrel showed only a touch of copper following the first shot, and no signs of copper after that. Powder fouling dropped off dramatically after the 5th or 6th shot. I think it's a bit faster barrel than my last one, based on down range elevation required. Unfortunately my sheep-dip Magnetospeed didn't give me a single reasonable MV figure in a dozen-plus shots. #%$#*&

Unlike my last barrel, this one shows POI shift with various muzzle devices. With the APA brake the POI is 1 MOA lower than bare muzzle; the the TBAC suppressor POI is 2 MOA lower than bare muzzle. No lateral shift on either.

With only 40 rounds down the tube, the rifle holds vertical well. The following is 6 rounds at 580 yards -- 2.4" vertical dispersion. Horizontal wasn't so stellar -- winds were 7-19 mph from my 3 o'clock.



The diamond to the left is at 636 yards -- 3 rounds with 2" of vertical. The circle in the distance is 20" at 815 yards. One miss to the left, due a wind gust of over 20 mph; one hit maybe an inch off center.

So far, Mongo like barrel.

Hey Fritz, I forgot to mention, those numbers and lines on your scope turrets are all wrong. Nice scope, I had a chance to look through one for awhile, and they have some good glass, just wish they had more reticle options to offer.

You missed a very challenging match in Raton last weekend. Wind was crazy, everyone struggled with it. I managed to shoot a 51, putting me in 2nd place.

Look forward to shooting with you at Battle for Breakneck. Are you going to try the Mile side-match with the 6.5?

quote:

Originally posted by Alpine:
...those numbers and lines on your scope turrets are all wrong...

It's called "Museum of Art", a distant cousin to your "Miley Cyrus" scopes.

Yeah, I heard the wind at Raton was challenging. You shot well -- nicely done.

Winds were challenging here that day, too. I introduced a co-worker's 17-year-old son to precision shooting. He had never shot past 125 yards before. Hitting steel at 200 with my 22lr made him happy. Hitting steel at 800 with my 308 made in uber happy. He's considering joining the Marines next year.

Hopefully this year's Breakneck won't be like last year's windy snowfest. Yep, I will do the 6.5 at the mile side match again. Gotta warm up for lobbing shots at the Wyoming ELR match. Let's hope the Breakneck guys don't recall that I broke one of their targets on the timed 5-target side match last year. The RO joked that I had "too much gun" with my 6.5, since I had just finished shooting the mile targets.

Today I learned there are two data jacks in a Magnetospeed V3 Chronograph -- one towards the front that faces downward and one towards the rear that faces rearward. With my unit, the front/down jack port has become increasingly finicky. The rear/rearward jack seems to work really, really well. Kudos to offgrid for showing me how his V3 works. All this time, just call me sheep dip.

I was considering a LabRadar, but after having a another shooter put it on my rifle, no way Jose. It absolutely would not read my MV with my suppressor. With a bare muzzle it provided data, but with such wide swings in MV, it really wasn't useful.

FWIW, the MV of my new barrel sped up 40 fps today during the match. I suspect it's close to stabilizing.

Great match today at Ft. Carson. Offgrid and Scott shot well. I was better than prior matches, but really sucked on the special olympics stage in the big plastic tube. Shooting pistol drills for speed and accuracy on steel with pistols was great fun after the match.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
Today I learned there are two data jacks in a Magnetospeed V3 Chronograph -- one towards the front that faces downward and one towards the rear that faces rearward. With my unit, the front/down jack port has become increasingly finicky. The rear/rearward jack seems to work really, really well. Kudos to offgrid for showing me how his V3 works. All this time, just call me sheep dip.

I was considering a LabRadar, but after having a another shooter put it on my rifle, no way Jose. It absolutely would not read my MV with my suppressor. With a bare muzzle it provided data, but with such wide swings in MV, it really wasn't useful.

FWIW, the MV of my new barrel sped up 40 fps today during the match. I suspect it's close to stabilizing.

Great match today at Ft. Carson. Offgrid and Scott shot well. I was better than prior matches, but really sucked on the special olympics stage in the big plastic tube. Shooting pistol drills for speed and accuracy on steel with pistols was great fun after the match.

They make an external mic that you can put closer to your can. A buddy has one and we use it all the time with my 30P-1 and Ultra 9.

I'm trying to get ready for the 1-mile side match shoot at the Breakneck PRS match and the Wyoming ELR match. I bought a couple of 24" square plates from JC Steel -- I drove T-posts a few weeks ago, but had not yet humped the steel to the target locations. Due to fence line issues, I got my exercise yesterday carrying one plate 600 yards and the other 700 yards across the pasture.

Winds really, really sucked yesterday. By the time I was able to shoot, I had 20-24 mph from my 3 o'clock. JBM elevation seems in the ballpark for Hornady 140 ELD-M. These are my first shots at the new 1300 yard location. I landed 3/5, only 6" of vertical variation on these three. Based on dirt signature, the two misses to the left seemed like they would have impacted somewhere high on the plate.



I then moved over to the 1200 yard target. Winds still 20-24 mph. Landed 5/5 -- woohoo! After the first impact I just started firing as fast as I could before the wind changed too much. The last shot was the low one on the left. About 11 inches of vertical variation.



The splash pattern really shows what was going on with the right-to-left wind. I was holding wind, meaning 12-15 MOA at 1300 yards, or roughly 3.5-4.3 mils for you Miley Cyrus scope guys. Frickin' wind.

You android guys who shoot matches should give this app a look. Enter match description, stage info, cof, da, targets, generate dope charts from previous shots, etc. Good stuff.

https://play.google.com/store/...eforums.matchtracker

Another update from the Dasher channel. Recently received a another Dasher barrel from jelrod1. This one is a 7.5 twist, 28", throated for the 115 Dtacs. Sent a him dummy round, matched the throat/freebore perfectly.

I've been running into a long time benchrest shooter at my local range for a couple years. I've watched him shoot several "screamers" with his 6ppc. Screamer as the BR world calls it is a true one-holer. He was there when I was working on a load for this barrel. We talked about working up loads, he shared with me how he does it in as few of rounds as possible, been doing it this way for many years. OK, I'll give it a try. It's only 15rds to start.

Find the most tolerable seating depth. Loaded up 3 different charges .5 grains apart. Each one of those charges, .005 jam, .000, .010/.020/.030 jump. Shot the three charges as a group at the various seating depths. I was surprised by the results. The .000 shot this. Keep in mind full grain spread. The jumped loads progressively opened up, didn't shoot the three .030 jump.



Loaded the three charges again, three each at .000. Two of those shot very well. Loaded .2 on either side of those two loads, three loads, three each. One was the clear winner. Loaded seven of those, shot four (almost a screamer!, 3 in the same hole, yanked the top one!), chron'd the other three.





My local 100yd range is at 8200' has a couple "shoot houses". Houses allow us to shoot in the winter... Next barrel, I'll bring my press, seater die, beam scale/trickler.... to the range, do all this in one trip.

There's all kinds of ways to go about finding a load. As always, YMMV. Have fun! Dasher!

Wow!

Nice! I assume the 28" barrel will be used when we lob rounds out past a mile at the Wyoming ELR match. I think you will hold vertical....well....

Lots of things can be learned from the precision of bench rest shooting. Just don't get to the point that you install a cappuccino machine and refrigerator next to those bench rests. If you do, we're entering your butt in Competition Dynamics' Sniper Adventure Challenge. And we'll make you shoot biathlon in the winter.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
And we'll make you shoot biathlon in the winter.

You do that?

I can no longer get around very well on Nordic skis, but I have a friend who is very fit, skis almost every day in the winter and is a good shot. He and his son have expressed interest in biathlon, and I’m curious where that sort of thing is practiced (with real rifles, not airguns or some other “acceptable” substitute). I could of course Internet search, but first hand knowledge is much better.