I'm out of state, but apparently last weekend we had a field fire at our Range. They were doing a Military arms shoot for kids and a spark on the steel range started it.

Now the long range steel area is closed until further notice.

We have ongoing issues with shooters and steel penetrator ammo destroying the steel. Now maybe they will address it.

http://www.krtv.com/story/3251...north-of-great-falls

FN in MT

I absolutely refused to believe it until I started conducting night familiarization with a steel target. Flashes of light (sparks?) were produced when the steel was hit with ordinary handgun bullets with gilding metal jackets and lead cores.

My noggin still struggles with copper and lead bullets sparking steel. At a night shoot at Greygun's facility in Oregon, we saw occasional sparks from 223 ammo that people swore didn't have steel tips or cores.

This year I started carrying water in a 2-gallon pump sprayer when I shoot at our family ranch. It's not much water, but between it and the shovel I always have with me, it makes me feel a little better if a small fire starts on our grassland. I get a bit nervous late in the summer -- especially in years when we had a wet spring, there's a boatload of tall dry grass, and the cattle have decided to munch other parts of the pasture.

Part of the ammo they were shooting was (I believe) Surplus. I can attest that my AK 74 will spark steel with surplus 7N6 ammo, as it does have a steel core.

Found THAT out the hard way a few summers ago. Luckily the 4 wheeler was close with some water on back in the rack. Water and a shovel stopped a growing grass fire for me. DID scare the crap out of me though.

There's also a chance that the ammo causing the sparks could have been Wolf or some other foreign, cheap, bi-metal jacketed ammo...

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:

I'll see a few of you at Raton this weekend. I will shoot both the AR match on Saturday and the bolt action on Sunday.

Stage 9 and 10, wind at your back hold left, in your face hold right Wind is channeling through two valleys.

I believe the hardest targets to hit, stage 1/#6, stage 5/#6, stage 6/#6, stage 8/#6. Have fun with those!

See you tomorrow afternoon.

A Wiseman says to check your velocity often.

Went over to a friends house this evening with Mjölnir (Thor's Hammer) aka the 7 SAUM. Started shooting at the 900-yard target, full size IPSC... over the top it went. Ok, cold bore shot, hasn't been shot since the Mile side match at the Battle of Breakneck in April. Second shot, aim low and smack, head shot. What the hell, I'm shooting .4-mil high. Repeat shooting high on 1000 and 1100 yard targets.

Got the Magnetospeed out, sure enough, my velocity jumped from 2920 to 2965-fps. The good thing is my ES was 6 with an SD of 2.

Updated the Kestrel, and center punched the 1000 and 1200-yard targets. Took it out to 2070-yards, holding 1-mil... First round miss, far right. Corrected my hold to 3-mils, just off the target, corrected again to 2.5-mils, HIT!

Guess I'm ready for the ELR PRS match now. After the match I'm going to retry IMR 7977, and hopefully tone my velocity down a little.

Question of the Century: So, which two targets did you miss offgrid?

quote:

Originally posted by Alpine:
Question of the Century: So, which two targets did you miss offgrid?

I'll let offgrid give the details, but I can say that he was shooting lights out. It was uber cool watching offgrid and Scotty own the course for so many stations. The Raton course is a fun place to shoot.

[Arnold voice] I'll be back...

quote:

Originally posted by Alpine:
Question of the Century: So, which two targets did you miss offgrid?

Stage 2, 9th stage of the day for us, clean to this point. All the "tough" targets behind me, easy stage 2 and 3 remain right!? 2nd target was down so we shot 1-3-1-4-5-6. Hit the 1st target with a 4 mph L-R hold. Bracketed 4-7 mph on the next target out in the open, not as protected from the wind, just miss right Go back to 1, feel the wind pick up, put 5 mph on the left edge, miss left I was frazzled from the 1st miss, maybe I shank that shot a bit? There goes my clean. OK slow down/re-group a 58 is still within reach. Cleaned the rest of that stage, cleaned stage 3 for a 58. Scott also shot a 58, he missed target 5/stage 1, target 2/stage 3.

This is the 11th or 12th season for the Raton match. 58 the highest score, believe a 58 has been shot three times. 56 was my previous high score. As Scott and I make the long walk back to the parking lot, we talk about our scores/two misses... OK, sure we wanted to clean, 58 no doubt is not too shabby, but, but....we were so close. Before the match if we new we shot 58's, damn good shooting. As we gather around the match director, hear about other scores... Holly crap another guy shot a 59!


Good shooting with you fritz, you did well for a FNG!

I want to keep the FNG label for awhile.

It was a great day of shooting -- reasonable wind, but challenging targets none the less. I figure at least half of my misses were sheep-dip technique errors, generally relaxing my squeeze on the rear bag right as I broke the shot, dropping the buttstock and sending the round about 1/2 plate high. GRRRR. I'm pretty certain I did that for all 3 targets I dropped on station 8 (?), or whichever station had the targets lined up into the trees, and I was wind bitch from the muddy shooting position.

Thanks to both offgrid and Alpine for showing me how to use shooting sticks in combination with a tripod. Hitting 5/6 at Raton versus 2/15 at Douglas made just a bit of difference in my final score.

59 or 60 the next time out -- baby steps. I recall a conversation with the best sporting clays shooter in Colorado. He stated he shot an unbelievable number of 99/100 tournaments before he scored his first 100/100. You'll get there.

I'm looking forward to the next match at Raton.

The Raton match could have been a complete disaster for me, but it turned out great.

I entered the AR-15 match on Saturday, assuming it would be pretty similar to the bolt action match on Sunday. The two matches shared only 3 of the 10 stations, with formats being a bit different. I used my 18" barrel rifle and screwed on the TBAC can for its debut in competition.

I dropped down on the sight in targets, worked my way out from 240 yards to 690 yards and back again with a very high hit rate. Figured this won't be so bad if the wind doesn't come up.

First station, not so much. Started shooting at wrong targets, got flustered, incorrectly dialed elevation back on the correct steel, winged a turkey behind the target (technically I "legged" a turkey, as he was hobbling a bit), and chewed up way too much time. Oh, well, on to the next station.

I was hitting targets well, just a bit slow moving from one to the next. Then it happened -- I suddenly couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, from inside the barn. With wet grass and mud around the targets, even my very experienced squad mates couldn't spot my impacts. I finally hit a few targets over the next few stations by bracketing targets by 2-4 MOA in all directions. I roughly figured out my POI issue when I saw my own trace go way low on a couple of targets. The guys with me -- "You saw your own trace?". I figured they were thinking I was jerking their chain. Dude, how the #%&$ do you see your own trace?

After the match I let my gun and can cool to ambient temps. Got back on the practice line, worked out to 690 yards and back with very few misses. After some 45 rounds I had a hot gun and hotter can, and began seeing POI shift down 2-6 MOA on a fairly random basis. I judged this by shooting in a long dirt bank at 240 yards, which showed impacts quite well.

I then pulled the suppressor, worked my way in and out to 690 yards, shot at the dirt bank -- no noticeable POI shift for 72 rounds and the gun was HOT. Put the slightly warm suppressor back on the gun, worked out 690 yards in 10 shots without issues. Fired rounds 11 and 12 into the 240-yard dirt bank -- #11 was about 2 MOA low, #12 was about 4 MOA low.

I have a suppressor problem with my 18" Wilson Combat. A similar downward POI shift occurred two weeks ago after 45-50 rounds. I plan to test the can with my 20" and 24" barrel rifles this weekend. Regardless of what happens this weekend, I will contact the can maker with this head scratching situation once I collect more data.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
I have a suppressor problem with my 18" Wilson Combat.

Perhaps I’m not understanding your other comments, but can you explain what you believe is happening? I do understand that it’s when you’re using the suppressor and the gun is hot that the problem occurs, but do you believe it’s a problem with the suppressor or with the barrel? Or don’t know?

Do you believe it’s possible that the weight of the suppressor actually bends the barrel when it (the barrel) gets hot enough?

Honestly, I'm clueless. There's a heat issue that's repeatable, I'm just trying to isolate it.

The 223 TBAC suppressor is titanium, pretty light, direct thread, a fairly new model (but an improvement of a prior model), and it has only a few hundred rounds down the pipe.

The gun is a factory Wilson Recon Tactical, IIRC barrel profile of .84" under the hand guards, .75" towards the muzzle. No fluting, 1/7" twist, roughly 2,000 rounds down the pipe. It's an accurate barrel -- capable of 1 MOA or better with a number of factory rounds. I've shot it out to 800 yards and it holds vertical well. This is the only can I've shot on this gun. When both gun and can are cold, it shoots very well.

It was a bit humorous right after the Raton AR match -- "Dude, it's the Indian, not the arrow." Back on the practice targets -- once I started ringing steel with a cold gun, but couldn't do it with a hot gun, the Indian/arrow remarks stopped.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
There's a heat issue that's repeatable, I'm just trying to isolate it.

This interests me because I’m trying to learn more about suppressors, so please keep us posted. I would definitely like to know whether the problem occurs with other rifles.

My longer barrel rifles have heavier barrels. The 20" is a Krieger HBAR. The 24" is a truck axle. Both of them have direct threads. This is plan B.

Plan C -- I have a Surefire Socom762 quick detach can for my 16" fluted barrel Wilson. I could buy a Surefire quick detach brake for the 18" Wilson, then test the Surefire on it. I could move the quick detach brake from the 16" to the 18" gun, but I like how the 16" shoots and I don't want to mess with it.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
I like how the 16" shoots and I don't want to mess with it.

Yes, that can definitely turn into a tale of woe.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
I want to keep the FNG label for awhile.

It was a great day of shooting -- reasonable wind, but challenging targets none the less. I figure at least half of my misses were sheep-dip technique errors, generally relaxing my squeeze on the rear bag right as I broke the shot, dropping the buttstock and sending the round about 1/2 plate high. GRRRR. I'm pretty certain I did that for all 3 targets I dropped on station 8 (?), or whichever station had the targets lined up into the trees, and I was wind bitch from the muddy shooting position.

Thanks to both offgrid and Alpine for showing me how to use shooting sticks in combination with a tripod. Hitting 5/6 at Raton versus 2/15 at Douglas made just a bit of difference in my final score.

59 or 60 the next time out -- baby steps. I recall a conversation with the best sporting clays shooter in Colorado. He stated he shot an unbelievable number of 99/100 tournaments before he scored his first 100/100. You'll get there.

I'm looking forward to the next match at Raton.

I'll have to check with Mike, maybe technically you're a FNG until you shoot another match!

Not sure if you notice how many times I adjusted my bi-pod legs on a stage. Stage 4 and 9 are the only stages I don't change heights. I'm trying to keep a light/consistent touch on the bag squeezing, minimizing a need for a lot of up movement. Also will frequently adjust my bag, cinch it in/out. I changed the bi-pod height twice on stage 8. If I don't do the above, I tend to "teeter" a bit on the closer/lower angle shots. Teeter bad, change cheek pressure, parallax.....

fritz, I think sigfreund nailed it saying it's the barrel getting hot. A common thing with suppressors are, they build up heat quickly, and that heat starts to transfer to the barrel, which is acting as a heat-sink. Very rapidly after the suppressor has reached a point where it cannot transfer heat to the surrounding airspace anymore, and/or if you are running one of those silicone heat sheilds, it has no place to transfer that heat but to the barrel, causing it to also build heat more rapidly. Simple thermodynamics. Your AR barrel probably has the thinnest profile of all your barrels, so you saw it there first. If you started putting many rounds down range with one of your GAP Crusaders, after a point, you would eventually start seeing the same thing happen that you saw in Raton with your AR.

Alpine -- I hope it's not the barrel changing POI due to heat plus weight of the can, but that is a strong possibility. Unfortunately, this is the AR I used in our Douglas team match last year. I suspect the timing and number of rounds in that match could have caused POI changes, too. Possibly in both the field and assault stages, had I been using a suppressor last year.

The first time the POI shift occurred at our ranch, I had my Rifles Only suppressor cover on the can. Thinking the cover could have been a contributing factor, I didn't use the suppressor cover at Raton.

My 16" Wilson has the same barrel profile as the 18", however the 16" barrel is fluted. The 16" wears the Surefire SOCOM can without a cover. So far the 16" carbine hasn't experienced POI shifts, but I don't think it has been quite as hot.

****
On a different topic -- do you have your ammo, dope, and wind-reading-ninja skilz all set for the upcoming long range match?