Stretching the .22LR's legs.

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Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 14 Oct 2018, 9:07 pm

I swapped some adjustable rings onto my Ruger American Rimfire Target .22LR to test it at longer ranges, without having to hold over. I set the rings up at about 55MoA which let me zero 8mm high at 50m, for a 55m zero at the very bottom of the turret. I can't move it those last two clicks down. I shot some groups at 25m, 50m, 100m and 180m to calculate the BC of the CCI Standard Velocity, which also gave me some feel for the wind, which was pushing me about 120mm to the right, when it was steady. At 180m I shot a 10rd group of 96mm, 2MoA without a rear bag. I made scope adjustments and decided to grab a bag, and then shot two groups of 112mm, and 139mm, although with the last group the page had come unstuck and was flapping in the breeze, so I had to wait for it to blow across to the right to be able to see the target mark for each shot. A drawback to having the scope mounted higher, and angled downward is a poor or non-existent cheek weld, which gets worse as I dial more elevation into the scope. I'll have to make up an adjustable cheek rest.

I know the muzzle velocity is 1080fps as I've measured it often enough, and I've been using .115 BC, which is near enough for calculating sub-200m shooting. But I needed to tweak the BC to get the trajectory to match reality. Surprisingly, I had to adjust the BC up to .165 to get it to follow the actual trajectory - possibly exacerbated by the partial tail wind. I set up the 1/2-scale ram at 177m, dialed up the calculated 21.5MoA, and dropped every bullet right into it. It was so easy I ended up just aiming at the head. Magic, trajectory confirmed, very good accuracy, and no more holdover-induced cant error.

So I dialed it up to 36MoA and tried at 240m at a 5mm steel plate 200mm wide by 400mm tall. The wind was coming from over my left shoulder and messing about a bit, so I was holding between the left edge and three-quarters of the target width (or 150mm) to the left side. The elevation was perfect. My second shot was a hit, but once I found a wind hold, I ran them quick before the wind could shift and was making about seven hits out of a ten-round mag. The last group to finish the box was seven hits from seven rounds. I was surprised to recover the flattened bullets from the ground a couple meters to the left of the target, so I can only guess the wind was turned around between me and the target.

The scope gives me 105MoA of elevation which should be enough to get me out past 500m with the 55m zero. I'm really impressed with today's effort though. I'll probably put a few hundred more onto the 240m gong to get some more feel for the wind, and then move to another gong the same size I've set up at 275m. When I can ring that one fairly consistently then I'll keep pushing it out.

I did take some photos, but I'll have to reduce their size to be able to upload them here and can't be bothered tonight, hopefully tomorrow.
Attachments
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275m plate is 440mm by 240mm
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240m (reverse side of plate)
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RAR Target .22LR in MDT LSS-22 Chassis
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240m and 275m targets attached to dead trees tucked well behind those trees at the dam, with very limited line of sight.
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Zeroing at 180m
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240m plate is 400mm by 200mm
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96mm 10rd group at 180m
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Last edited by bladeracer on 19 Oct 2018, 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by Sergeant Hartman » 15 Oct 2018, 6:35 am

Nice work BR.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by ClaytonT88 » 15 Oct 2018, 6:39 am

Sounds like a fun day!
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by Urastus » 15 Oct 2018, 8:06 pm

That's impressive :)
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by Urastus » 16 Oct 2018, 9:23 am

So being sub sonic does that mean these rounds are more accurate at distance? There's no doubting that it is great shooting - your skill and a good rifle. I would be very happy to achieve these results :)
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by Daddybang » 16 Oct 2018, 10:56 am

Nice work BR I always find it impressive what people can do with the humble ol .22lr
when they stretch out. One day I'll have the opportunity to try longer ranges! :thumbsup: :drinks:
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 16 Oct 2018, 1:38 pm

Had another go yesterday. I fired a box each at 180m and 240m and had to do something stupid to miss the plates. So I dialed the scope up to 45MoA and tried at the 275m plate (250mm wide, 450mm tall). First mag gave me ten hits :-) Fired fifty rounds at that with just a few misses when the wind got silly. I recorded it on my phone and you hear the bullet hit the plate after I cycle a new round into the chamber. You see the spot appear on the plate and then hear the ding :-) Flight time should be 1.34 seconds, plus another second for the sound to travel back the 1163ft to my ear. I checked the wind at 4mph when it was holding steady, coming from seven to eight o'clock.

So I moved it back to 355m and dialed up 65MoA. I'm shooting over the dam at this point so I nailed the plate above head height up a dead tree, the only place I could get line of sight to it. Unfortunately, the bullet is soaring 2100mm above LoS at the top of the arc...and hitting an overhanging tree limb 60m in front of the target :-) Neat little group on the branch but none got through to the plate.

We've got the cows in one paddock while they're calving so I took a plate out into the middle of a paddock yesterday where there are no trees and hundreds of meters of clear sight line. I can't see the plate from here so I'll have to wander up later and see how I get on with it. I haven't ranged it yet but I think I should be able to get past 400m on it.

My computer is messing me about just now and refusing to let me open pictures or edit them, but I'll post them when I sort it out.
Last edited by bladeracer on 16 Oct 2018, 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 16 Oct 2018, 1:59 pm

Urastus wrote:So being sub sonic does that mean these rounds are more accurate at distance? There's no doubting that it is great shooting - your skill and a good rifle. I would be very happy to achieve these results :)


The theory is that bullets can be upset transitioning down through the sound barrier, but not all bullets do this. With cast lead bullets it's virtually impossible to manufacture the aerodynamic shape consistently, so they tend to be more upset by this than jacketed bullets might be.

The most accurate cartridge I tried in my Rugers is SK High Velocity, which is now discontinued, but it shows that sometimes a high-velocity bullet can be accurate despite transition.

I doubt there's much if any "skill" involved in doing this. But the rifles are astonishingly good, and in particular the cheap CCI Std Velocity just impresses me more every time I shoot it.

Once you accurately measure the actual trajectory of the cartridge, then it's just a matter of lasing the target and calculating the holdover required. At 275m, five meters short or long is roughly 1MoA or 75mm of elevation error. Dialing the elevation in so you are dropping the bullets onto the cross hair instead of holding over to some point above the target gets rid of the increased group size caused by cant of the scope and rifle. Imagine holding on a point of aim high up a tree for example to get the bullets to hit your 240m target 4.6m below it (I have put aiming marks high up a pole and stood that beside my target in the past). You vary your position to lean the rifle just _one degree_ to each side of vertical (measured from the axis of the scope and the bore). At 4.6m, one degree (or 60MoA) is 80mm, so a two-degree cant will spread your group size by 160mm across the target, on top of the group size itself. As I'm not using a bubble I guess there is some degree of skill involved in ensuring the reticle is plumb. Holding the reticle at a consistent cant will maintain a group size, but it will be to one side of the target.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 17 Oct 2018, 6:35 pm

Pretty damp here today but I did a 180rd session on the ram at 177m and the plate at 240m, with virtually no misses. I swapped between the two targets to see if the scope would track accurately - no complaints from me there :-)

I also ranged some shooting positions for the larger plate I've set up out to 400m. My rangefinder struggled with the rain past 250m, but it dried out for a bit just now. Hopefully I can do some more shooting tomorrow.

We have maggies swooping here. Three of them noticed the dirt kicking up around the ram and came down to see what was on offer. Pricks wandered around in front of the target totally oblivious to bullets passing a foot away and smacking the gong a meter behind them. I switched to another steel I use, so they spotted that and trotted across to there for a look - couldn't win :-)

And our final calf popped out in the wee hours this morning :-)
I noticed a pair of Indian Minors perched on the back of one of our cows this arvo, off limits!

My computer is bogged down for unknown reasons. The browser works fine but anything to do with accessing the hard drive refuses to function. Like viewing or editing photos :-(
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 19 Oct 2018, 7:15 pm

I managed to get my computer running, although I'm not sure what I fixed, so next time I boot it it might be a problem again. But I managed to add some pics to the original post.

I've fired almost a brick at these plates now, and have given up using the rear bag - it's just not needed. Constantly switching between the 180m, 240m and 275m is no problem at all for the scope. I've also been using the reticle to place bullets without dialing the turret up. These three ranges are virtually impossible to miss, even kneeling with the rifle resting across the fence, unless the wind is really messing about.

Today I had a practice on those, then walked up to the other paddock, shooting off the bipod prone in the grass. I had a very difficult time getting hits at 200m though...until I realised I was at 225m! I ranged the paddock the other night to various comfortable positions from 200m out to 400m, at about 25m intervals, and noted them on paper. I wandered out and set up at where I just assumed I'd ranged 200m, dialed up 27MoA and missed the whole mag. I checked my elevation notes and realised where I was, dialed up to the calculated 33MoA, and hit the whole mag. But the hits were low on the plate, so I came up to 35MoA and fired another mag into a nice little group, although I didn't have time to go and take a shot of the plate. This plate is much larger, at 440mm high by 570mm wide and sprayed with silver galv. I wish I'd remembered to put the half-scale ram up there as well as that would've been a nice challenge.

I moved back to 250m and came up to 38.5MoA, and added 1.5MoA as I'd had to come up at 225m. I fired a mag but dropped two misses off the left edge that I called, so I was happy with that.

Then back to 300m. I dialed up 51.75MoA as calculated but they were dropping short, so I held on the 4.4MoA hold-over dot and got a hit. I dialed it up to 55MoA and got about 50% hits out of a 10rd mag. I wasn't able to see my impacts at this range though so I decided not to continue spraying bullets hopefully in the general direction. I had fairly heavy mirage at this range also, although that might be partly due to my line of sight only just passing over a crest midway to the target, and both myself and the target being on the ground, while it was quite a warm day.

I'll have to paint the target plate tomorrow and try again, and possibly take the spotting scope with me so I can see my hits :-)
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 15 Nov 2018, 7:46 am

I almost burned a full case of CCI Std Velocity the past month playing with the .22 at extended ranges, a very relaxing way to spend a few hours a day :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kyzih_Jt2U
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 15 Nov 2018, 4:06 pm

As I have several thousand rounds down the tube since I cleaned the bore, I shot some groups at 50m, 100m and 150m yesterday and then cleaned it. Prone from the bipod without any rear support, and the 100m and 150m groups I was aiming through tall grass so didn't have a great sight picture, although the bullets were lobbing over the grass.

Then I shot 180rds this arvo at 50m to see if there was any improvement. I shot the first "cleaned" groups the same way and didn't see any measurable difference. Then I put a rear bag under it and shot a lot of 5rd groups to see if there was any measureable change as the bore fouled. I finished off with a 40m and 25m group to check point of impact at very close ranges. I also shot some silhouettes nearby which sprayed fragments across my targets.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by simmo » 04 Dec 2018, 5:44 am

If anyone reading this is in or around ACT I believe Canberra rifle club shoots long range rimfire comps once a month. There are two stages, one stage at 100M and one stage 200M.

Looks like a lot of fun from what I saw a couple of weeks ago.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 04 Dec 2018, 12:13 pm

simmo wrote:If anyone reading this is in or around ACT I believe Canberra rifle club shoots long range rimfire comps once a month. There are two stages, one stage at 100M and one stage 200M.

Looks like a lot of fun from what I saw a couple of weeks ago.


What sort of competition - silhouette?
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by simmo » 04 Dec 2018, 9:18 pm

bladeracer wrote:
simmo wrote:If anyone reading this is in or around ACT I believe Canberra rifle club shoots long range rimfire comps once a month. There are two stages, one stage at 100M and one stage 200M.

Looks like a lot of fun from what I saw a couple of weeks ago.


What sort of competition - silhouette?


Targets I believe. It liked they were pulling targets and marking the target face with spotters.
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by bladeracer » 05 Dec 2018, 1:52 pm

simmo wrote:
bladeracer wrote:
simmo wrote:If anyone reading this is in or around ACT I believe Canberra rifle club shoots long range rimfire comps once a month. There are two stages, one stage at 100M and one stage 200M.

Looks like a lot of fun from what I saw a couple of weeks ago.


What sort of competition - silhouette?


Targets I believe. It liked they were pulling targets and marking the target face with spotters.


Like F-Class? One shot, wait for it to be marked, and so on?
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Re: Stretching the .22LR's legs.

Post by simmo » 14 Dec 2018, 7:57 pm

Yeh thats pretty much it. The .22LR won’t hit supersonic to register on electronic targets.
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