Range trip 01/28/20

[M1A4ME]

What a waste of ammo.  One hundred and five rounds through the 4" FNS .40 and the best group was the factory Win. 180 grain hollow points.

Fifty rounds with BE86 with 10 round groups starting near minimum powder charge and working up in 0.2 grain increments.

Then, fifty rounds with AA#7 with powder charges increasing in 0.2 grain increments.

Not one group worth taking pictures of except for documentation of what didn't work.

I went to the gym this morning, my back was starting to hurt, I was figuring it was a mistake to go shooting.  The FNS groups were bad, bad, bad.  Got so disgusted between the 3rd and 4th groups of AA#7 powder I laid the FNS down, pulled the P07 out of the IWB holster and shot the best group of the afternoon.

A friend was shooting my XD 5" Tactical .45 and the new M&P 2.0 45 "Compact" with factory 230 grain FMJ and some of my Missouri Bullet Co. coated lead flat point bullets.  Had to failures to fire with those reloads.  Picked them up, put them in the M&P and they went bang.  I repeated that problem near the end of the afternoon when I tried to shoot some .45 acp reloads with 230 grain LRN and Red Dot powder.  Two duds that wouldn't even shoot in the M&P.  For some reason I left the primer type off the box label, gotta grab the reloading logbook and seen what brand primer I used for those.

Walked away from the pistol range to try out the two new AR15's.  The short stroker from a month back ran flawlessly for me and I got the scope finished up, sighted in the magpul back up sights, put the scope back on and confirmed it returned to zero.  Grabbed the ugly one I just finished building and it was short stroking pretty bad.  Got the scope sighted in and didn't fool with the back up sights.

Only thing to add is that ugly rifle has an ugly trigger, too.  Pull it back it drags, bumps, stops but doesn't go bang.  Pull harder, it sort of gives, drags, bumps to a stop again and with some more effort will finally put a hole in the target.  Then it may, may not load the next round.  The good thing?  Ugly AR outshoots the pretty one with the BA barrel by quite a bit.  Gotta fix the short stroking and maybe, maybe buy a better trigger for it.  Oh, shot with the green illuminated reticle at first, then switched to the red illuminated reticle (same look/shape but different colors). I prefer red even in daylight hours.  The green is visible, but the red enables me to be more precise with my aiming.

All the ammo fired through the AR15's was reloads with Hornady 55 grain FMJBT and 27.0 grains of BLC2.

No pictures of ugly FNS groups.  The CZ group is the P07 doing what it normally does, make everything else on the table look 2nd rate.  I've put pictures of those groups on here before.

Now, two rifles and four pistols to clean this evening.

[M1A4ME]

I lied.  Took pics for the range day log on my laptop and will share just a few.  Be warned, most ain't very pretty.

First 5 from the FNS 4" .40 was 5 Win. 180 grain HPs.



Then there was 50 rounds of 180 grain HPs from Everglades with BE86 in steps from 5.5 grains to 6.3 grains.  Best 10 shot group appears to be at 6.1 gns.



Then 30 rounds with the same 180 grain HP and AA#7 in steps from 7.6 grains to 8.5 grains.  Best 10 shot group appears to be at 8.3 gns.



Between the middle step of 8.1 grains of AA#7 and 8.3 grains of AA#7 I'd had all I could stand and had to pull the P07 out of the holster and shoot 5 of the 135 grain Noslers it likes to well.



When I do that it makes me feel better as I know I'm not just having a bad day.  It's the other pistol or the ammo.

I shot the last 20 rounds with the AA#7 and saw no improvement.

We gathered up the targets and headed back to the range shack to hand in the cardboard backers and put the pistol stuff in the Expedition and grab the two AR15s.

The ugly rifle is going to be a learning curve.  While the grip issues are helped by the right side of the ambidextrous safeties the hand position (twisted around to the right side) messes with my finger position on the trigger.   Also having issues with the scope mount/scope.  I guess I'm going to have to get a scope mount with a longer forward position to allow me to get my nose on the charging handle and maintain a consistent cheek weld.  In spite of that it shot better than the other rifle that has a Ballistics Advantage stainless fluted 16" barrel on it.

Several 3 and 4 shot groups at 25 yds. while sighting the scope in.  Moved things the wrong way there one time.  Played with the reticle color, too, while sighting it in.  I thought green would be good for me when there was plenty of light and did some of the sighting in that way.  Then turned on the red illumination and liked it better.  Finished up sighting it in on another target and ended up leaving that one on the backer at the 25 yd. range.

Target.



Ugly AR15.



While cleaning the pistols I remembered:
1.  P07 jammed bullet nose into the feed ramp twice.  That has never happened before.  Only previous failure, in 7 or 8 years, has been a swelled case that wouldn't chamber.  It has always been 100% with the 135 Noslers or the 140 grain Missouri Bullet Co. lead bullets.  Brought it home and cleaned it/lubed it and didn't see a thing that could have caused those failures.
2.  XD 5" Tactical .45 has been 100% until today.  It was getting failures to fire with my reloads that it's always shot before.  The reloads that wouldn't fire in the XD did fire in the M&P .45.  Brought it home and cleaned/lubed it as well.  Didn't see anything wrong with it.  It fired factory Blazer .45 ammo with no issues.
3.  XD 5" Tactical .45 would not fire the butt kicking 230 grain LRN bullets that were kicking my butt out of the M&P a month ago.  Tried them twice.  Wouldn't light them up even on the 2nd striker strike.
4.  The crummy shooting FNS was perfect through 105 rounds.
5.  The ugly AR is short stroking (I've only run into that on a couple other AR15s that were new.)  Aggravating.
6.  The other AR ran fine for me (short stroking a month ago) after I moved the gas block a hair, or two, forward off the barrel shoulder, like it had a front handguard band on it.

As far as the ugly AR short stroking, I've seen that on two other rifles with rifle length gas systems that had the barrel shortened 2" to 18".  I opened up the gas port on both of those and they were 100% since then.  Funny what a pressure drop can do to one if it's sort of border line to start with.

I think I'm done.  Finished off the tea my wife made for me and now it's shower time.

Have a good one.

[M1A4ME]

The XD failures to fire with the MB coated bullets were Tula small pistol primers.

The XD failure to fire with the 230 grain LRN bullets were Tula large pistol primers.  This ammo was loaded back in 2014 (not an issue, just surprised I haven't already shot it up.)