Another 374 rounds down the tube today
I'm going wear her out at this rate!
Bayonet fell off twice today. As I don't want to dress the bayonet or the lug with a file I'll leave it off for now, and she still shoots okay anyway
Also removed the sling as it serves no purpose outside of aesthetics. And somebody put in a generic sling swivel under the forend, which makes shooting off a bag annoying, and it tore holes in two bags already, so I removed that.
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Approaching 400rds I started getting stuck brass from a dirty chamber, so at 447rds, I removed the scope and gave her a good clean. The extractor grooves were remarkably grubby but I have no idea how much shooting she's done before coming to me. Bore and chamber look very nice after a couple of patches.
I put the scope back on, then went up and painted some steels so I could see them through the grass. I set up two steel plates alongside each other to give me a target about 450mm square for determining wind, a pair of 5" gongs, and one half-scale silhouette of the chicken, pig, Turkey, ram. With the weather I'm being warned about I wanted to have a nice long session
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I didn't bother shooting any paper early on, just continued on the steels at 183m. Was hitting the gongs fairly easily, until everything went out the window - that was the bayonet wandering around
I was using Highland RX HVHP and trying to get a 10-out-of-10 on the 5" gong, but the wind was all over the place and I couldn't do better than 8/10. I put fifty rounds on the steel plates first trying to get a feel for the wind. It was skipping around between a 400mm left hold to a 100mm right hold, frustrating as hell
I was using a dead-on elevation hold though as I'd zeroed yesterday at 183m. Elevation only varied within about 60mm due to wind. I was shooting from a lee under trees, couldn't feel the wind at all, though I could hear it changing pitch above me, and I could see it blowing the trees around.
I gave her a clean and filled my tummy then went out again, this time with Eley Standard, as she seems to love it. Unfortunately the scope mount made no effort to retain zero at all, it was miles out and I couldn't see bullet splashes anywhere. I boresighted at 99m, sent ten rounds down, also with no idea. I came right back to a fence post at 18m to find it shooting 40mm left! So every time I've boresighted this rifle, I get the elevation virtually perfect, but the windage is consistantly around six-minutes to the left, mad. It must be some illusion due to the light coming through the bore, or perhaps the extractor is obstructing my view. Next time, I'll boresight it normally then give it 6MoA to the right and see what I get!
I shot three very nice groups at .475", .361", and .450" (all sub-MoA!) to confirm a 50m zero.
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Then I went back out to 183m using hold-over. I fired three rounds on the plates to find my holdover was about 6MoA down the duplex post at 18-power, very annoying. I wound the zoom out to put the point of impact at the top of the post at 11-power, much more precise. I only had to worry about cant and wind as I got back onto the gongs.
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This photo shows my hold. The plates are on the left (each is roughly 220mm wide by 420mm tall), the gong is buried in the grass, level with the top of the duplex, with about 200mm wind hold to the left. You can see that I'm sighting across a line of star pickets (for the electric fences when we move cattle), which was really annoying me, so I moved the targets around and repainted them during this session. Later on I also moved my shooting table about five-metres to the right, which also extended the distance to 185m. I had calves milling about in the cattle yard with me and their curiosity was getting out of hand
I tried to get a 10/10 on video but I think I only managed a 9/10, usually dropping the first shot due to the wind changing while I reloaded.
https://youtu.be/P8gd9Yldv_EAfter finishing off the box of Eley Standard, and moving my position to 185m, I switched to Highland RX HVRN. This shoots significantly flatter than the subsonic Eley Standard, so I wound it back up to 18-power and used the same duplex post hold. Again I tried to make a 10/10, but could only manage a 9/10. There was nowhere handy to rest my phone to record from there.
I set up a 50m target board to measure the iron sight graduations, but after discovering the mount won't retain zero I decided to leave that for another day.