I set up a front bag rest only on a cooler, block of wood, and Hornady's 6th Vol.2. I rested the forearm way out front in the bag, about where you would attach a bipod if you had one. The chrono was about 12 ft in front of the muzzel. I set the target at 100m (109 yrds) knowing she would shoot high. The rear fixed battle sight is regulated to at least 200m, maybe 250m depending on the sources I have read. She makes some unusual sounds as I use her in repeater mode (the magazine can be bypassed with a switch rendering her a single shot). A "clack" as the lifter moves, followed by a "clink" as the new case is lifted just before being push-fed into the chamber. Very distinctive sound. The first time I pulled the trigger made me smile.
A big push, but not painful. Enough to know you shot a real gun though! I did find the sights difficult to use however. The rear sight is narrow but OK. The front sight is an inverted triangle, and its pointy tip easily became blurry and hard to see. I tried painting the front sight light flourescent green with some water-based gun sight paint (it scrapes off with your finger well enough). This seemed to help some, but I scraped it off later as I realized the rear sight had some glare that was bluring the front sight. A permanent black marker I had handy seemed to help. Perhaps using both together would have been the best way to go. Prof. Loudenboomer's ammo fed perfectly, and chrono'd very well if I remembered to follow the ritual of tipping the barrel to full vertical before every shot. However, as I looked at the speed of all loads throughout the day, it ranged from 1340 to 1399. Later, as I got into the habit of the ritual, his loads had an extreme spread of ten in a 4 shot group.
There is real potential here! For me, the greatest difficulty was just seeing the sights well. Here is a pic of what the target looked like at 100m, and a pic of about the best group I could come up with at the time.
I then moved the target out to 200m. You can readily see how much trouble I was having with elevation by this time. My eyes were getting tired I think. You can see the one shot at the bottom of the paper, one in the 10 ring, and one in the head at the hairline.
I think this gun has real potential, but I will have to work with the sights some more, or maybe have a custom front sight made. Its only a dovetail mount, and it would be easy to put back to stock configuration.
Afterwords, I broke out my CZ 550 in 375 H&H to do some load developement. I needed a powder with greater density and a little faster burning as I was running out of volume before pressure with the Ramshot Magnum and the 300 grain Barnes TSX. I also changed to a Winchester primer, which is hotter than the Fed 215m. I backed off 6 grains from a theoretical max load, and was a little disappointed by the velocity: only 2400 fps or so. Its OK though, I actually have some airspace in this load, and room to grow! Other than that, I just put 20 rounds through her to fire-form more brass. Here's my CZ again. She looks stock, but she has a trigger job and an 8 ounce mercury recoil reducer in the buttstock, which really makes her balance a lot better. Combined with the premium factory recoil pad, she is actually pretty comfortable to shoot. I need to hit 2700-2750 with a load using this bullet, and then I'll be happy.
All in all, a very nice day shooting.
-Tutt
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