Re: Suggestions for rifle upgrades
Ah. I thought I saw another 12 F/TR sitting down on the left hand side of the line on Saturday, but not on Sunday. I was squadded down on target 14 at the other end of the line both days.
FWIW... Doug Ridge is notorious (in my mind, anyway) for being a range where one guy (usually in the middle of the line) will be banging away 10s and Xs with no problem whatsoever, while everybody else is pulling out whatever hair they might have and going "WTF?!? where did that 8 (or 7) come from...?" The next day, that person may be on another firing point... and howling curses at the wind gods as well.
The 600yd flags... are only somewhat useful on that range. Mirage often appears to run opposite the direction the bullet goes, while the flags do something else. The mirage *intensity* can be useful, but truthful directional changes are very, very hard to see @ DRRC - at least for me. When everything lines up - mirage and flags - either hold up (as in 'wait') or hold *way* over...
John Weil uses a Master Class butt plate on several of his 12 F/TR rifles, and generally I'd say they work very well for him. I can't remember exactly what his complaint with the Tubb was (I think it was too heavy, for one) but he really likes the Master Class one. I'm also in the 6'4"-6'5" range, long neck, long arms, etc. Normally I get by with a slip-on LimbSavr recoil pad and having the scope all the way forward on the rail (turrets nutted up against the front ring)... or else using an extended rail like the NF (spendy) or EGW (hate the screw heads they supply). I *really* wish Farrell cataloged a longer rail... trust me, I understand completely. I had put together a new rifle and was shooting it there this weekend with a new (hot) load... and the scope one notch too far back on the rail. I was getting clobbered dang near every shot, right in the glasses. I'll be pulling the EGW rail off another gun and putting it on this one, and probably adding a MC buttplate also. Even at 6'5", I may end up taking 3/4" or so off the factory stock to make up for the added weight.
I had the magnification on my scope turned down most of the weekend... from 42x to 30x. With a 6-24x, I doubt I would have touched it. To some degree, mirage is wind you can see - and usually shows changes sooner than the flags will.
The ammo sounds fine... although I will point out that the Berger 155.5 BT 'Fullbore' is not a 2156 (SMK). Overall, it sounds pretty close to what I was running on Sunday - B155.5BT @ 2.120" (Sinclair comparator insert) which for my barrel is 20 thou back from a hard jam, 46.5 Varget in neck-turned Lapua Palma brass, lit by a CCI 450 primer, running @ 2980fps. Assuming it groups good (sub half minute, preferably less) @ 300yds, it should be good to go.
Do you use a spotting scope to watch the mirage while shooting? That can help a *lot*... dial it back to focus about where the lower flag in the middle of the range of is, then look at the mirage running along the tops of the number boards - thats where your bullet is flying.
On that range, if you look at it in profile from the side... the lower flags are about 40 feet below where the bullet path is. Thats why they are not so helpful as you might expect. Also about that point... the terrain is still going *down*, the bullet is still arcing *up*, and the targets are *uphill* from the firing line - and the bullets actually clear the tree tops and just get hammered by wind currents you literally can't see or predict accurately. By focusing the scope around that region of the range, you can see it *somewhat*.
HTH,
Monte
