Lessons in Chemistry at the rifle range.

Went to the range today to verify that the changes that have been made to the rifle are for the better. (crowned barrel and trigger )

Fouled the barrel using the nastiest stuff I have.(Czech Milsurp) then changed over to the Hungarian ammo. Here are the first 10 from that.


Had a couple of flyers but not too bad all in all. Its strange but as the barrel heats up the rounds start to drift down. I am zeroed for 250m which puts my POI at 100m almost 5" above center.

Now its hot out today.(usually I am at the range in the wee hours of the day to beat the heat and late bloomers.) and humidity is about 80%(or more) so I am taking my time on things. 10 rounds heats up the gun pretty good and makes holding it 'interesting' sometimes. Especially if it has been resting in the sun for a few(such as the walk to the targets). So the sun is beaming down on the benches. Ammo box next to the rifle: me completely oblivious to the obvious.

(you can probably see where this is going but its not as bad as it could be.)

So I go back to the benches and fire off 10 more. First three I check. Where are my impacts?!?!!??! I borrow a guys Scope(my binos are only 14X, good enough for spotting but not enough to find a 'stray' hole on the paper if its not in the splatter zone) WHOA! about 9" and 8" left. WTF?

I go ahead and fire off the last 7 in that mag and wait for a cease fire. Here are the results for that.


Heres a tip that I have never had to deal with before. KEEP YOUR AMMO OUT OF THE SUN! Its not that it can 'go off' What it does do is changes the burn rate of the powder. I was zeroed in for 2400fps apx A guy further up allowed me to shoot one round through his Chronometer and a heated round was shooting at nearly 3000fps. The cheap bullets used in these rounds gets unstable very quickly at those speeds and starts to yaw almost immediately. Now in the heat of battle I wouldn't be concerned about it but if I were using this for hunting and putting meat on the table I would be. (granted if I were hunting it would be cooler out too so moot point)

There were lots of friendly shooters out today. One guy up a couple of benches had a Garand and a Mosin Nagant. He let me shoot the Mosie once. Nice rifle. For the price that these are going for its a very tempting piece too.(would be more tempting if it were semi-auto :) ) Very hard hitting rifle. Much harder than the SKS but then it is nearly twice the size or that round too. I would say the equivalent of a .308 and since the rounds are nearly the same not surprising.