Well after getting back from the RX18 class, I made it to the range on saturday. The new ammo works really well as far as accuracy goes. It's the 175 gr Federal Gold Medal Match in .308 Win. only had to dial 1.4 mil elevation to go from a 100 yard zero to being on the bullseye at 300 yards. my rifle is a POF P308 with a 16" barrel.
Here is my best group at 300 yards. The others were a bit bigger at around 2", but I was struggling with failure to feed problems. Anyway, I think this should get me to 1000 yards without a problem. I'll probably move up to the new Federal Gold Medal Bergers when I try to go beyond that. But for now the max range I have access to is 300 yards.
Great shooting! If I'm lucky my groups with my 308 at 100 yards measure around an inch! :-D ! I feel your pain on the lack of distance. I only have 300 meters to shoot. :-(
Yeah, now that I'm dialed in at 300 yards, it seems a trivial distance to shoot now.
Smaller targets?
That helps with aim and margin of error to simulate longer distances, but not the ballistics. I've read that a .22 LR can be used to simulate long range ballistics at shorter ranges. I've got a Ruger 10/22, maybe I'll try shooting it at 300 yards. I'll have to put a better scope on it.
I've been thinking about a .22LR for practice as well. Used to compete in smallbore match years ago. One of the things we did for practice was shoot at clay pigeons at 200+ yards. Wind and ballistics become very important past about 75 yards for a .22. It's quite a challenge and I imagine not much different than centerfire shooting well past 1000.
I'm getting more and more frugal in my dotage- ok, I'm old and cheap-and if the wife knew how much I've spent in the last couple of years, she'd have my head! So, what do you guys think of using a semi-auto .223 Wylde chambered AR for some training between 300 and 500 yards? My first precision rifle is a semi-auto 308 and the new one is a bolt action 6.5 CR.
Our 500 yard range may be open just in time to shut down for hunting season, though.
I already have the Wylde upper, so it's a matter of putting glass on it. If Rex gives his seal of approval for Val's new mount, I'm thinking that using my IOR on the 308 and the .223 would be a cost effective solution. I'll probably have to monkey with the riser on the 308 and build up the buttstock one of my AR lowers to get the proper cheek weld, but I've spent enough coin in the last few years to have gone to every RX event several times over and I don't want to miss whatever Rex has in store for next year!
You sure don't. If you haven't been to a live fire event, there's still tickets available for our California live fire. It's going to be a whole nuther' animal. Easily as intense as the Texas live fire but with even more awesome and a much better range facility. It's doing to be disneyland for gun guys.
Sounds like a grand time , but I couldn't get to a seminar this year. Next year will have to do, and I'm a farily patient man.
We'll have to get another bunch of seminars going.
Now you're talking(typing?)! I knew there was a reason I subscribed to your channel! ;-)
Need one on the east coast...
A small update. I've sent some of the FGMM 175gr to Federal for testing. It's the only ammo I've shot that won't reliably cycle my gun or lock the bolt open on last shot. I just did a range session to test out my new Magnetospeed V3 and father some data. I also had some of the new Federal Gold Medal Berger 185gr. And had no function issues while the 175gr continued to misbehave. Here are the results from the Magnetospeed. I shared the data with Federal. They said it's gonna be about two weeks before they get to it. My barrel is 16.5" long and I hand wrote the advertised velocity and the difference to actual.
Probably peaking their pressure curve at the wrong time for a gas gun. Velocities are what I'd expect but failure to cycle is pretty uncommon. Most AR platform rifles are over-gassed so they'll cycle if you fart down the barrel. Kinda surprised any full power .308 load isn't cycling it.
I concur. But since the FGM Bergers work OK and everything else I've shot through it works I'm not concerned. It will be interesting to see what Federal has to say.
ballisrticxlr has more experience than me, no doubt, but here's my two cents anyway.
I suggest using the process of elimination to be certain that the malfunction is not due to the ammo, a bad mag, the extractor, a problem with the gas port, or a combination of factors.
My .308 did not function correctly with Wincheser 150s, but did with Norma 150s, until I made sure the gas block was perfectly aligned with the gas port.
A buddy of mine had what he thought was a bad mag with his AR15, but it turned out to be the extractor.
When I put my can on the .308 function went to sh*t again, even though I adjusted the gas port every way from Sunday. It's good now with a different buffer/spring combo.
Very interested to hear the outcome.
Well, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I just shot the RX Live Fire in PA and didn’t have any malfunctions with the 175 grain FGMM. I had a few boxes of the 308 and the rest was the 7.62 version, which are supposed to be identical other than the 308 is polished and the 7.62 is not and you can see the annealing. I even turned down the gas system and it still cycled. I left it turned down the entire time and put a couple hundred rounds through it. I was also able to get out to 1030 yards reliably but the drop was b pretty bad. Had to dial 12.8 mils at 1000 and 13.6 at 1030, So a small error would result in a miss. I got real close to hitting the clays and soda cans at 1000. Never hit one, but was only missing by inches.
Hmm. I suspect it was a heck of a lot warmer than back in October, when you first posted. How many more rounds have been cycled through since then? I'm wondering if the bolt carrier just needed to be smoothed out? Odd thought, but a thought none the less. :-)
Also, how were your muzzle velocities compared to October. Just wondering. Did Federal ever get back to you?
Probably 100-150 rounds since I first had the problem. The only change I made was lubing the buffer spring with Super Lube grease to eliminate the sproing sound. I don’t remember any failures when I shot to gather data a couple weeks before the live fire. Federal responded and said the ammo was on the money for velocity and pressure. Temps the first day were similar to the days I had the problems. Also, average velocity was within 1fps. I should have checked velocity on the last day during the free fire, but fatigue got the best of me.
Same here. I checked the atmospherics, but didn't get around to velocities, either. I don't think anyone did! I was going to check yesterday, as the weather was quite similar to Friday, but decided not to bother, as my vehicle was parked a hundred yards from my rifle when I remembered the MagneetoSpeed. Also, I'm having the barrel modified to fit my can this week, so memorizing what may be outdated drop info didn't seem reasonable!
Apparently my ballisticxlr account is broken, so I made another. Anyway, remember the can will increase back pressure so any soft extraction issues that are mild will almost certainly disappear or become much less severe. Call that one even.