Chilly, Windy Range Day in Aubery

It was a crazy day in Aubrey and if you zoom in on this photograph you can see the orange windsock on the left blowing right as the red flag on the right blows left and my 223yd target lies exactly in between them!



As you see I have the chronograph out and I Chrono'd 50 loads for the 45 without shooting my chronograph. Well actually I skinned one of the uprights and I am amazed how neatly low velocity lead cuts through things when it is heavy. I was trying to load 45 ACP subsonic, but I'm only shooting from a combat size pistol. I think that means some ragged velocities which is about what I achieved. They were slower and quieter than the factory bulk ammo and they certainly work the action well enough.

I did however have to have different magazines for the different ammo because of variable feed characteristics.

Putting my loads into the original magazine that came with the gun produced excellent results, and putting the Federal American Eagles in the Chip MacCormak PowerMags did too, where the opposite was NOT true!

With my lighter projectiles, the ammunition did not want to pop up in front of the Slide fast enough. If I loaded One in the Chamber and then put a mag in, the gun ran flawlessly.

If I just slammed a magazine into it and racked the action, it would not feed that first round.

Once I started swapping mags that problem went away.

So now the joys of preloaded magazines become apparent.

After I grazed my Chrono again I switched to the 308 Winchester cartridges I had loaded. These are not my new favorite formula but they are the rejects left over from my last outing that I had not shot because I knew they would be too weak to produce.

I was totally right as you can see by the following graphs (but there was that weird tail wind.)

What you see represents four Trials of five shots each, at 223 yards.

My first 5 were taken at the bottom center diamond. I showed this as pattern number 4 on my targets. These were 168-grain bthp match grade Barnes Bullets, over 46 grains of Varget.

Last outing, 47 grain charges had produced my best results, but I didn't expect these to be so much worse because I went from 0.55 MOA to 2 MOA. I'm going to stick with blaming the wind a bit here, both days being equally cold. I did land one 1 MOA from the bullseye


My next shots were all 150 grain hornaday GMX ballistic tip boat tail bullets.
First was 46 grains of Varget and these were predictably faster and more accurate.

First shot is labeled "Cold 1" and fell just 1.2" from the center of the target. I then took 4 shots at the upper left Diamond labeled Pat #1.

Cold 2 was the same bullet with 46.5 grains, and about the same accuracy. Pat #2 was shot with those same loads.

"Cold 3" had 47 grains of Varget, shot at the upper right Diamond of the upper Target. My last four shots are labeled Pat #3.

I finally scored and bull's-eyes shooting pattern 2 and pattern 3, but considering the loads and shooting conditions I am really happy with how this turned out.

I know the next trip will be even more successful because I have dialed in the loads and the scope a little better each time.

I used IMR 8208 XBR in my MVP 5.56. It is also good for a .308.

Varget and CFE223 are top of the charts right now. I picked up some CFE223 and CFE Pistol powder as well. These are both very clean powders by rep, but I haven't tried the CFEs yet.

Nice range report, jealous y'all actually have sunshine we are drowning weeks now.
Joy of a 45 acp plus a can is most 230grn factory ammo is inherently subsonic. Your motivating me to crank up the press again been few years, I need to roll some reduced 30/30 loads for grandson to use.

Thanks DJ.
All my .45 ACP were below 800 fps and some below 700, so certainly subsonic.
The bulk American Eagles were just over 800 fps.
I have yet to load a good .30-30.....