Barton Road 21st July

[Ovenpaa]

Time to haul the Black AI out, the poor thing has been languishing in the cabinet for far too long whilst the S&L, 4(T) Green AI and AR thing have been used this year so it came out today.

First thing was chase the spiders out of the bore and this gave me an opportunity to test the VFG weapon care system a couple of days ago, basically small felt tampons you screw on the end of a special adapter, add some very fine cleaning paste and scrub away, it worked well and although I failed to find any spiders I did notice a slight improvement in general smoothness as a clean patch was passed through which is impressive considering I thought I had done a very thorough job of cleaning last time out.

Ammunition, I had a box of Norma brass that I had shot some time ago so I opted for it instead of my normal choice of Lapua, add some Fed210M's and 155 Moly Scenar's. As this was an untried load to this brass (I had previously shot it with 190SMK's) and the day was going to be warm I dropped the load from 47.5 to 47.0 grains of N540.

Starting at 800 yards was easy enough and the rifle worked well with 6,2 Mil of elevation, given the state of the barrel I am used to it stringing up after a few shots however it topped out at 6,0 Mils and was a delight to shoot, I have recently fitted an AI type bipod with one of my own spigots with lock in preference to my normal choice of a Harris and I did find it a bit high for my liking however this was partly due to the FP being on a bit of a hump. Target was a standard F Class and it went in the white bit as well as dancing around it so I was happy. I was on a 1:1 with a new to the club shooter who had never shot at 800 so it as great to see him get on the frame second shot after being a tad high and then stay there, not bad for a moderated hunting Krico with a 20" or less barrel. I do like to see such things get on the paper and we only shoot on 48" frames so it is not as if he had a 6 foot target to play with. Eventually he moved onto the AI and the two of them performed very well together.

Butts duty was fun, the Viking had come with us so the three of us had a chance to have a good natter about all thing shooting and otherwise, nice to see the frames had been oiled as well and despite getting turned over on the times it was good with excellent weather.

Out to 1000 yards and the AI was happy again as was the new shooter with his Krico with both of us well into the middle first shot and some good shots to follow around a steady 9,4 mils. The mirage was very good and was helping nicely to show any minor wind changes before suddenly disappearing from my 16X PMII

All in all a good day and we even bumped into a few forum members as well. The slightly reduced load worked well and is giving around 2850fps/870msec and seemed to be a very steady load at 1000, certainly worth volume checking the brass and doing some math to compare the Norma versus Lapua.

[M99]

Sounds like a good day was had! at least it stayed dry for you.