quote:

Originally posted by E26R-40-BSE:
How's the return to zero with sharing the Spuhr-mounted scope between rifles? Repeatable offset by known number of clicks? Or do you need to re-zero every time?

Return to zero worked out well. Shot 50rds with the 22, remounted the Spuhr/scope on the 6x47 went back to the known numbers of clicks, 5 shots. Put it back on the 22, 50 shots, back on the 6x47, 5 shots. Good enough.

You have something in the works where you might be sharing a scope between two rifles? Rifle for Mrs. E26?

I got to shoot my relays today.

Weather was mixed today. Some rain, some swirling winds, occasional sun would come out and give a little mirage. Honestly - conditions were extremely favorable for some relays and just a touch challenging for others.

Turns out the 198-12X was a legit score and was shot by a Junior! He shot just slightly less than that the relay before at 600. Assuming he was registered with the NRA prior to the match, he set a new JR national record on his first string and broke his own record on the next string.

Rumor also has it there was another national record set at 500 yards with a team relay.

Combined with a new national record bench rest (2.6XX inch 10 shot group at 1000 yards), there have been 3-4 new national records set at this range in the past 3 months.

I on the other hand.. I didn't get anywhere NEAR any records. I had issues with vertical - might be worthy of some discussion. By the end of the match, almost all the vertical was gone (same brass, same powder, some bullets, same primers, etc etc). The only difference was round count. The vertical stopped around 100 rounds down the barrel. From rounds 60-100 I was getting a full minute and half to two minutes of elevation change between 1-2 rounds! From 100 rounds on, the vertical swing dropped to around .5 to .75 MOA. Just an interesting observation.

Okay. Enough delaying. Here are the scores:



THE RIFLE WILL SHOOT SUB MOA ALL 94.88% DAY LONG!!

I finally figured out a couple of shooting lanes on the extended family ranch land we have in eastern Colorado. Today I shot at 460 yards in the prairie, from prone, down a shallow drainage, into a small flood control dam. Conditions were not friendly -- gusty winds of 5-20 mph from my 9 o'clock, moving grass to judge windspeed, and noticeable mirage from the sunny ground in front of me.

My first five were with FGMM 175 (.308). Not being one of my finest days of reading my JBM tables, I dialed 8 MOA elevation for the first 3 shots (the low ones on the plate) then 8.25 MOA for the next two (the two highest shots). Correct elevation was likely 8.75 - 9.0 MOA (8,100' DA). I held 2-3 MOA off the left edge of the 12"x12" plate. Group of 4.08".



Being stupid, I switched to Hornady 168 BTHP and tried to hit my 8"x8" plate. Zero for five. Bummer. Probably scared the plate, though. So back to FGMM 175 for five rounds at the 8"x8" plate. Again zero for five. %&#*@ bummer. Holds all over the place -- dead on to 4 MOA off the edge of the plate. The combination of a fair amount of grass on the berm and heavy left to right wind made it tough to read my impacts and correct my holds.

Anyway, I'm pleased with my new JC Steel targets. The 3/8" AR 500 steel seems burly, the convey belt hanging straps seem uber burly. But if the wind is going to be this bad out there, I either need larger plates or improved wind reading skilz.

View from last weekend-7, 8, 9, 10, and 12.

Rained so no dust, got lost after 10. Will try again in a couple weeks when the new scale is in and I can cook up some bergers. Was shooting FGMM175s, did not really expect them to get there.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
I finally figured out a couple of shooting lanes on the extended family ranch land we have in eastern Colorado. Today I shot at 460 yards in the prairie, from prone, down a shallow drainage, into a small flood control dam. Conditions were not friendly -- gusty winds of 5-20 mph from my 9 o'clock, moving grass to judge windspeed, and noticeable mirage from the sunny ground in front of me.

My first five were with FGMM 175 (.308). Not being one of my finest days of reading my JBM tables, I dialed 8 MOA elevation for the first 3 shots (the low ones on the plate) then 8.25 MOA for the next two (the two highest shots). Correct elevation was likely 8.75 - 9.0 MOA (8,100' DA). I held 2-3 MOA off the left edge of the 12"x12" plate. Group of 4.08".


Being stupid, I switched to Hornady 168 BTHP and tried to hit my 8"x8" plate. Zero for five. Bummer. Probably scared the plate, though. So back to FGMM 175 for five rounds at the 8"x8" plate. Again zero for five. %&#*@ bummer. Holds all over the place -- dead on to 4 MOA off the edge of the plate. The combination of a fair amount of grass on the berm and heavy left to right wind made it tough to read my impacts and correct my holds.

Anyway, I'm pleased with my new JC Steel targets. The 3/8" AR 500 steel seems burly, the convey belt hanging straps seem uber burly. But if the wind is going to be this bad out there, I either need larger plates or improved wind reading skilz.

Let's talk wind and mirage for a little bit here.

At long ranges, I find that most wind charts and ballistics calculator provide poor values that have seldom to do with reality. The reason for this is that wind will do whatever wind wants to do and as the distance grows so do the histrionics performed by the wind.

There are a few things to keep in mind that may help somewhat in figuring out some trends. First off wind comes in gradients; low to the ground the wind is not as strong as it is further up. In other words, the higher off the ground a bullet is, the more effect the wind will have on it. I always laugh when people extend their Kestrels up in the air to get a wind reading. If I were to do that my Kestrel would be about 9-10 feet off the ground and on a flat terrain my bullet will reach that elevation about 600 yards down range when I'm shooting at 1000 yards. For the first 3-400 yards it will be very close to the ground largely unaffected by the wind, or certainly not as much as if it were 9 feet above the ground.

Also, the wind at the line may have little to do with the wind 6 football fields away or longer. You also have to take into account the direction of the wind. Between the line and the target the wind direction may be reversed and reversed again. So does the far wind have more effect on your bullet than the near wind? In my opinion it does, especially over flat terrain. However, take a shot across mountain tops or over a canyon or some such and that's a whole new ballgame.

Terrain features can intensify wind effects. Wind hitting a berm will go up and have a lifting effect on a bullet for up to 7 times the height of the berm and that may help explain some of those WTF moments dealing with unexplained verticals.

Mirage is a whole 'nother kettle of fish so to speak and we can talk about that if you're interested.

It is important to know your bullet and its trajectory really well. I stopped looking for that magical silver bullet years ago and I have been shooting the same .308 bullet at 1000 yards for about 5 years now and that represents about 12,000 rounds under match conditions.

Every time I think I have it sorted out, I get a new surprise.

Nikon -- I suspect the more places I find to shoot at this ranch, the more I'll learn of its wind issues. I "found" two nice lanes of up to 350 yards in the trees, with the final 150 yards across an open field. As a bonus, the bullets are flying at least 30 feet off the deck in the open field, right next to our windmill. Woohoo -- can I say crosswinds? Unfortunately from my shooting positions, the pine trees block my vision of the windmill.

The 460 yards into the dam is from the crest of a hill (only 20 yards from the 350 yard lane, but shooting in the opposite direction), with big pine trees behind me, with a drop at least 30 yards to the dam. Monday's northerly winds were full value, and crossed three shallow drainages (10-15 feet deep each, with relatively smooth bottoms and ridges) before crossing the drainage (20-25 feet deep) my bullet path followed.

I realize that judging wind from the 10" tall prairie grass is going to be a challenge. I doubt the yucca bushes will help much, either. Small pines to my right and left, plus big pines behind me resulted in a dead calm, steamy hot shooting position. Move 100 yards towards the targets and I needed a light jacket due to the wind chill.

As my understanding of wind patterns improve, I believe I can set targets out to about 800 yards to the corner of our property. However, that will require the three neighbors's cattle aren't grazing close to our shared corners.

In the ammo department, I feel fairly comfy with FGMM 175, but I picked up a number of boxes of Hornady 168 BTHP awhile back, at a good price when ammo was vaporware. I understand the Hornady ballistics out to 300 yards pretty well, but this was my first attempt beyond 400. Oh well, live and learn.

There is no substitute for practice. Shooting on the Internet and shooting for real are two very different things, as you so well know.

One of the things I do in a match is to monitor the flags for any dominant wind and translate the appearance of the flag(s) to an offset on the target. So what you may want to do is translate the 10" tall prairie grass movement to how much to hold one side or the other on the target. Most people will try to guage the wind into MPH and then run the conversion factors for distance and velocity and BC and so on and then will apply the conversion on the scope. That takes too long, is fraught with mistakes and the wind has changed by the time I would figure all this out. At most, I would convert the grass to MOAs.

You know my feelings about factory ammo, but under 600 yards, FGMM is the least bad ammo, along with BHA. Hornady is not too bad either. One of these days, you will need to discover what you can do with proper match ammo.

quote:

Originally posted by NikonUser:

Terrain features can intensify wind effects. Wind hitting a berm will go up and have a lifting effect on a bullet for up to 7 times the height of the berm and that may help explain some of those WTF moments dealing with unexplained verticals.

Mirage is a whole 'nother kettle of fish so to speak and we can talk about that if you're interested.

I've been experiencing terrain features' effects shooting over a couple valleys to get to 1000. Up drafts are gradually getting easier to judge here but my WTF moment happened the other day. A buddy and I were there and I started with a cold bore hit at 480 after looking at conditions and holding the right edge of the 8x8 plate. Next shot was at 785 on a 10" round. Conditions between me and 500 had around a 7 mph right to left wind. At 600 there was a bush slightly bending right to left. I caught mirage around 650 or so barely moving left to right. At the target looked calm. Held left edge first shot and missed around 3/4mil right. Corrected to impact and hit. Moved to the 1000 yard plate, held 1.5 left and got a hit. Only thing I saw anywhere saying left to right was that slight movement of mirage. Had to be there but I never did see it. Once tree and grass movement started back at 700-1000 things started acting more like I'm used to.

I would be interested in your thoughts and experience with mirage. For me it has never seemed to lie but I have a hard time judging speed.

Mirage is a huge subject in itself and its use in shooting depends greatly on how you detect and decipher it. Since most people never shoot beyond 100 or 200 yards, mirage never really comes into play, but when the distance grows beyond 300 yards and the Sun beats down on the ground, stuff starts happening in the scope.

Mirage is actually a misnomer for the phenomenon about which we are talking here. A true mirage is an illusion about something that does not exist. The best example is on a long straight road a true mirage will manifest itself as water on the road in the distance when in fact the road is quite dry.

The phenomenon we are interested in is really an atmospheric distortion caused by heat rising from the ground, especially when the air is humid. It manifests itself as a shimmering in the distance or just plain old distortion of the target which appears in the riflescope like a crazed amoeba, flexing and distorting. A lot of people think that turning down the magnification is the way to lessen or conquer this "mirage," but in my opinion, that's just going to cost you points in a competition.

Let me address this from the narrow point of view of a 1000 yard competitor (which is really all I'm good for anymore.)

The "mirage" is both a curse and a blessing, it's up to you to lessen the first and enhance the second. When I'm on the line and the mirage is up and running, I have a spotting scope next to me. (In fact, I always have a spotting scope when I compete; mirage or not.) My riflescope will be focused (parallax-adjusted) for high precision on the target, 1000 yards away, at maximum magnification. Sometimes I can detect the mirage at 1000 yards, sometimes I can't. Either way it's not a problem. I use my spotting scope to monitor the conditions. I have an 80mm Kowa with the 27X LER eyepiece and what I do is hunt for the mirage. I focus it at the 1000 yard target line and then I start dialing back until I detect the a good solid mirage image in the scope at about 600 yards out, 400 yards from the target. That's where my bullet will be the highest from the ground and subject to the most wind.

Once the scopes are set, I monitor the mirage in the spotting scope and keep and eye on the flags also. I try to correlate the flags and the mirage in the scope. Mirage is very fickle and it will show changes in the wind faster than a flag. Also, flags at our range are on either side of the range, whereas mirage is in my lane, so to speak.

When there is some wind the mirage will appear like a river in the scopes going from one side to the other. When the river slows down, a change is occurring and I don't shoot. When the mirage does not look like a river, but rather looks like a boil, that means there is no wind at the distance your scope is focused on. It is also extremely dangerous, points-wise, to shoot in a boil because you are opening yourself to unpredictable elevation issues. The mirage will cause the target to appear higher than it really is and when you fire you'll get a 9 or worse, out of the top, or bottom if you are trying to counteract the elevation issue and you do it at the wrong time. Also, if you screw up the wind call, you get a double whammy where your 9 at 12 o'clock becomes an 8 at 2 o'clock; We don't shoot square targets.

So in a boil, if you can, refrain from shooting and wait for the mirage to come back to what you were used to. If you can afford the time, of course.

The issue with estimating the mirage is too try to assign a velocity to it and then try to convert that velocity to an MOA or Mil correction. I can't do that quickly enough, so I just convert the mirage flow in the spotting scope to a hold on the target. When I'm "confident" that my read will be good for the next 3-4 seconds, I transition to the rifle, close the bolt and get the trigger pulled in a few seconds. I will note the mirage in the riflescope and if I see a big difference from the prior riflescope mirage, I may delay, increase or decrease the hold. but this gets done in a few seconds. Or I don't shoot and pull back.

After I shoot, I do my follow through and immediately jump back on the spotting scope to see if conditions have changed while I was shooting. When the target comes back up, my scorer will call out the value and shot number while I open the bolt, pluck out the fired case and place a new cartridge in the raceway and I go back to the spotting scope.

The above is in heavy mirage situations. When the wind gets much above about 10 MPH, the mirage is gone, or it's so solid you can't identify it properly in the scope. At that point, it's all flags and I may elect to point my spotting scope in a way to monitor a few specific flags.

There have been may occasions where the mirage is going one way at 600, another way at 1000 and the flags are all over the place. If you're in sighters, this is a good time to check to see which indicator is the most important one. If you're not in sighters or even in a match, I will rely on the 600 yard mirage more readily than any of the other indicators. If they all agree, then it's easy-peasy.

The bottom line is that in order to use the mirage advantageously, you need a spotting scope, focused properly. If your distance is short, say 600 yards or less, you can do without the spotting scope and rely on the riflescope to monitor the mirage. At least, that's what I like to see my opponents do. I always go to the line with my spotting scope unless it's early in the morning and the wind and mirage are still sleeping.

If you have specific questions, feel free to ask.

Permit me to add a few more thoughts.

At the recent Texas State match, I spent far more time on the spotting scope than I did on the riflescope. The wind was nasty and there was no trace of mirage all day. I selected 2 specific flags at 600 and 800 yards, to be my guides. I put in 2 MOA on the scope, something I very seldom do, but the wind was bad and I would have had to hold off target for too many shots, something I am not overly fond of doing. But from that point forward, I just monitored those flags and adjusted my hold on the target depending on how the flags looked. I firmly believed that's what enabled me to win State and shoot one of my best scores ever even with the crappy conditions.

At the most recent match at the beginning of this month, it was mirage city after the first match and I focused on about 600 yards with the Kowa. I even detected the mirage going in the opposite direction at 1000 yards, it was a crazy day. I relied on the 600 yard mirage and won that match also.

Have any of you guys heard of Benchmark Barrels? It's a long shot, but I would like to use someone local, should I ever find an action for the AICS chassis I have sitting around.

quote:

Originally posted by Voshterkoff:
Have any of you guys heard of Benchmark Barrels? It's a long shot, but I would like to use someone local, should I ever find an action for the AICS chassis I have sitting around.

Ya, I've heard of Benchmark barrels. A couple guys I shoot local steel matches with have Benchmark barrels, shoot great. Guess you would see lots of Benchmark barrels at matches in Washington, Oregon.... I see lots of local barrel maker Mark Chanlynn's barrels at matches here in Colorado. Doubt many on here have heard of Chanlynn barrels, he's been making barrels for 40+ yrs.

quote:

Originally posted by offgrid:
You have something in the works where you might be sharing a scope between two rifles? Rifle for Mrs. E26?

Ha, she was smiling when I told her of your question But no, not at this time. Just curious how the swapping back and forth works out. Also just put a nice Bushnell ERS scope on her rifle, and got the barrel threaded for the can. That ought to do it for a while. It was fun though when after the Spring shoot in Ft. Morgan she remarked "you know, of all the shooting we do the long-range stuff is the most fun". So there is another 6.5mm in the future, latest when her current barrel is shot out.

One down, only one left. Found out last weekend that the long distance facility in Blakely, GA, formerly "AIM", has gone private. Its now "Legion", an LEO and .mil only training facility. We will see if it survives in that form or not.

That leaves one private, invitation-only 1K range in reasonable driving distance in lower Alabama. They hold only a few practice sessions/matches there each year so LD shooting is going to be tough to come by for a while.

RMD

quote:

Originally posted by offgrid:
Finalized the load on the 24" 6x47, it's shooting very well with 34.8/Varget/105 Hybrids/.050 jump @ 3020 with 300rds on the barrel. Of the three 6x47's I've had chambered, this one is a tad more accurate than the other two. Happy with my choice on the lighter XLR stock, probably sell off another AICS stock and put my 40X 22lr trainer in a XLR stock.

I normally take off the front scope cap when shooting matches on non-square ranges. In between cap sizes for the scope, the size used is very snug, broke two of them (hinges) taking them off/on. A fellow shooter has been using camera lens caps on his scopes for awhile, he gave me one to try. Screws in where a sunshade would go. It works great, can't perceive a difference with it on and it protects the scope glass.

Crappy picture of the lens cap on the scope.

Offgrid,

I really like your camera filter idea. Can you tell me more about how the sizing works? I just ordered a Nightforce 3.5-15x50 and am trying to decide which Hoya filter will fit. They show 49mm and 52mm sizes available. I'm guessing the 52mm is the right one, assuming of course that thread size/pitch are compatible.

Brett B,

the inside diameter of my scope measures 57MM +/-. From that, would also guess the 52MM will work for your scope. Probably best to bring your scope into a local camera shop to check.

Congrats on getting the NF, great scopes.

No pics, but I've got a Cooper Model 54 Excalibur in .260 Remington. It's topped with an IOR Valdada 3-18x scope. It's not a target rifle. It's light enough to carry up mountains all day and bag that bighorn sheep at 900 yards.

Pics to come soon.

I feel like a kid on Christmas. Just opened up boxes containing my new Steiner Military 5-25 x 56,Sunshade,Spuhr mount and AAD caps. Sucks cause I have to go to work and can't mount up and play

quote:

Originally posted by jlemmy:
I feel like a kid on Christmas. Just opened up boxes containing my new Steiner Military 5-25 x 56,Sunshade,Spuhr mount and AAD caps. Sucks cause I have to go to work and can't mount up and play

Congrats! Which reticle?