Interesting Result at The Range

[COSteve]

Yesterday I took my 40 cal carbine and both my 155grn and 180grn handloads out to compare them. The loads I settled on were both 90% of max with Power Pistol and they produce almost the same POI at 100yds which is where I've got my Ruger Police Carbine sighted in at.

For review, my carbine has a rear ghost ring sight at the back of the receiver that I added a smaller aperture to for more precision. With the longer sight radius and the increased aiming accuracy of the peep sight over a barrel mounted notched blade, I found that my carbine was much more accurate than I had anticipated.

A few weeks ago I tested the 155grn loads to see if I could squeak by with an aimed shot at 200yds. With the front blade at the top of the aperture, I just barely got hits at 200yds as it's hard to see much of the target. So, I have 155grn loads that I can use for aimed fire from my carbine at 200yds.

Next came the 180grn loads and to my surprise, not only could I also hit aimed shots at 200yds but I actually didn't have to run the front blade all the way to the top of the aperture. It's close, but not at the top giving me a better sight picture. So, my choice for general purpose loads will be the 180grns.

Further, the pulls I got from AR turned out to be the same shape as X-Treme's 180s so I'm guessing that is what they were. Anyway, they were decently accurate out at 200yds considering that they are pistol bullets.

[JBowen]

It's always nice when a plan works out good. Are you going to do any tweaking on your load or stick with what you've got?

JBowen

[COSteve]

It's always nice when a plan works out good. Are you going to do any tweaking on your load or stick with what you've got?

JBowen

I'm considering upping the powder charge a bit to 95% or so after I chrono the current load to see if I can make a meaningful change in the trajectory with the idea that if I can, I'll consider zeroing if at say 125 - 150 yards to see what happens.

That's the beauty of handloading. I get to tinker with the recipe to see if I can gain anything useful without overly stressing the brass. However, I'm not expecting to be able to do much in flattening the curve so it's more of just an experiment.

[Tycer]

Excellent. Thanks for the report!