ND 1000yd BR 6th March 2016

[dg]

fairly warm day kept numbers down, but produced a few willy willy's during the match.

results attached

cheers
dave g

[macca]

That second target was nasty.
So the howa goes alright?
Cheers

[dg]

g'day grant

yeah mate, the howa is punching above it's weight, provided, i get my act together with trigger release and a consistent hold/follow through.

the 18+ incher with the howa had 4 in sub 10 inches but one way out, due, i am pretty sure to my rushed and poor hold.

after the match finished on sunday, another group with the howa had 5 on paper but was more a shotgun, up and down and sideways pattern-(posted a photo in the budget BR rifle report).

it has now had just over 100 rounds through it and as you would know there is significant burn at the end of the chamber and the lead/rifling transition area has had the edges/definition markedly reduced.

at the moment,i intend to play with it for a while, and then think about fitting a match barrel.

cheers
dave

[Tony Z]

Dave as you know i screwed around with lots of stuff over the years. I have also read with interest your excellent report on a budget BR rifle. Looking at your groups and reading the reports makes me think you are borderline stable. Try meplat trimming 15 or 20 thou off those pills and let's indulge me with a group at 1K even though a couple of points of BC may be lost. The horizontal is weather, the vertical is very possibly nose tipping leading to variable frontal area leading to erratic BC. Been there before and it is a bandaid fix by just shortening the bullet just enough to get it to fly all the way.

[dg]

hi tony

i agree with the borderline stability situation with the 95' sierras.

originally i did not expect them to stabilise at all.(ie 1 in 10 barrel)

when they shot ok at 100yards with round holes, it was a surprise and an even bigger surprise when they made 1000yds and actually shot better than i ever expected.

as you would know, this has been a just for interest and a bit of fun project which exceeded all prior expectations.

as detailed in the budget BR rifle report, when the Howa produced some reasonable groups in non match conditions at 1000yds, just for my own interest and a bit of a challenge, i wanted to try and get 5 on paper in a match.

at our February match, when i only managed 4 on each target ( the 4 shots were reasonably central), given the allowances used, i was shocked that i misjudged badly the shot that went off paper on both targets, in similar conditions ??

yesterday's conditions were typical ND, not bad not good, and i deliberatley used the 6mm BR to compare it to the Howa 243.

the BR group was well under 3 inches vertical with around 7 inches of width, which given the conditions, was quite pleasing.

the two groups with the Howa were probably shot in slightly better conditions and even allowing for the standard trigger i expected they would be better than they ended up.

i could be wrong, but i tend to think that the stability situation is the reason that the sideways wind drift is much more than i expected for the 95's at around 3100 fps.(during the sighter period i was holding off more than i thought should have been necessary)

as you would have seen in the photos of the groups for the howa to usually have 3 or 4 out of 5 shots cluster ok but then have 1 or 2 fliers, is as you mentioned and i agree, due to the marginal stability.

i only purchased 200 95's, when they are gone, i am not that keen to buy more and then i will most likely get serious about fitting a match barrel and replacing the trigger.

the other reason for this project was to demonstrate to those that might be thinking about trying IBS1000yd, that it can be done with any suitable factory rifle (other than a 1 in 10 twist 243) without the immediate need to fit a match barrel etc.

that can come later once the 1000yd BR IBS addiction takes hold

cheers
dave

[trevort]

Great stuff guys thanks for sharing and educating