22lr SK Pistol Match Ammo
- Thread starter daluka69
- Start date
I shot a case of it last year for practice and indoor 50 foot matches. It would shoot 10's all day long at 50 feet and on the A51 target at 50 yards out of the rifle that I was using it in. It did not shoot well enough at 100 yards (A33 target) to use for my purpose.
Different Brands/grades/lots of rimfire ammo work differently in different rifles so YMMV.
Different Brands/grades/lots of rimfire ammo work differently in different rifles so YMMV.
As so often is the case, whether it'll work with your particular gun or not just depends. Different guns like different ammo than others. One can on test them out to see how the particular ammo performs. I've got an Excel spreadsheet with over 1200 lines of data on the large majority of brands and types of .22 LR ammo (not all done by me). In my own experience, and well as looking at the data from others, SK ammo does pretty well no matter which type is used, though I wouldn't say it's the best, but above average. For me, the SK Pistol Match ammo performed just as well as the SK Rifle Match ammo. My rifle (an RPRR with a Shaw match barrel) likes the SK Long Range Match ammo the best giving me very low ES's and SD's. Because this Long Range Match ammo did so well, I made sure I bought a couple bricks of the same lot. Always gotta keep in mind that just because one lot shoots well doesn't mean the next one will. . . or visa versa for that matter.
Give it a try, since you can't really know how well it'll do for you until you do.
Give it a try, since you can't really know how well it'll do for you until you do.
As so often is the case, whether it'll work with your particular gun or not just depends. Different guns like different ammo than others. One can on test them out to see how the particular ammo performs. I've got an Excel spreadsheet with over 1200 lines of data on the large majority of brands and types of .22 LR ammo (not all done by me). In my own experience, and well as looking at the data from others, SK ammo does pretty well no matter which type is used, though I wouldn't say it's the best, but above average. For me, the SK Pistol Match ammo performed just as well as the SK Rifle Match ammo. My rifle (an RPRR with a Shaw match barrel) likes the SK Long Range Match ammo the best giving me very low ES's and SD's. Because this Long Range Match ammo did so well, I made sure I bought a couple bricks of the same lot. Always gotta keep in mind that just because one lot shoots well doesn't mean the next one will. . . or visa versa for that matter.
Give it a try, since you can't really know how well it'll do for you until you do.
For rifle, I shoot Pistol Match Special, it shoots in the 1090' for FPS. I believe it's a good 50 fps faster than Pistol Match.
Here's @ 100 yards
The published MV for the SK Pistol Match that I fired was 1083 fps at the time. I got an average of about 1095 fps out of my RPRR with the Shaw barrel and 1044 fps out of the factory barrel. (and both barrel are the same length)
Last edited:
Did you notice that your rifle with the shaw barrel is shooting a lot faster than the standard RPRR factory barrel? My buddy has a RPRR factory barrel and it shoots probably 50-75 fps slower than my rifle. We chrono'd his center-x at 1037, and with the dope calculator, my rifle would have been shooting it around 1090-1100. We couldn't get the magneto speed to work on my rifle since my fore-end is too long. I'll try to labradar it on Christmas.
His RPRR factory keeps up pretty well upto 100, but then the groups spread out quite a bit at 200 since the velocity is so much slower.
For Pistol Match Special, a guy at the match said his shot at 1090 when he chrono'd it, the lot I have (3000 rounds I bought) shoots around 1125 I think. Every once in a while I hear the super sonic crack, I think in the match yesterday there was 1 or 2 cracks in the 80 rounds I shot.
His RPRR factory keeps up pretty well upto 100, but then the groups spread out quite a bit at 200 since the velocity is so much slower.
For Pistol Match Special, a guy at the match said his shot at 1090 when he chrono'd it, the lot I have (3000 rounds I bought) shoots around 1125 I think. Every once in a while I hear the super sonic crack, I think in the match yesterday there was 1 or 2 cracks in the 80 rounds I shot.
Definitly yes. . . with all ammo.
I assume it's mostly due to the mach chamber where the bullet is seated into the lands. Shaw warns about not being able to extract unfired cartridges due to that.
For mine, it runs from 30-50 fps depending on the brand.
With Center-X I get just over 1100 fps with the Shaw barrel and was getting around 1074 fps with factory barrel. Accuracy was best with both of my barrels using Federal Ultra Match, but Center-X right there too. The chrono I use is also a Magnetospeed v3.
Yeah, the additional speed I get out of the Shaw barrel does present that kind of problem in staying sub-sonic with some of the different makes of cartridges.
Pistol Match Special works very well in both my CZ 455 and Sauer 200 STR.
results for 250 rounds - Average vel 1067, max 1123(cold bore), min 1036 and ES 87.
the graph below shows my 5 shot group MOA results for PMS and other ammo (the good the bad and the ugly - no cherry picking.) You ca see that PMS is definitely one of the most consistent for me/my guns. You can see that at 100m Eley Match is better for me.
50m
100m
results for 250 rounds - Average vel 1067, max 1123(cold bore), min 1036 and ES 87.
the graph below shows my 5 shot group MOA results for PMS and other ammo (the good the bad and the ugly - no cherry picking.) You ca see that PMS is definitely one of the most consistent for me/my guns. You can see that at 100m Eley Match is better for me.
50m
100m
I LIKE those graphs and will have start doing that myself. I assume you're sorting from smallest to largest MOA to get that progression???
@straightshooter1 Thanks yes, sort by ammo type then group size. I find the graph really helps to see which ammo types are consistent and which have, to borrow a phrase, 'random acts of accuracy'.
yes, sort by ammo type then group size. I find the graph really helps to see which ammo types are consistent and which have, to borrow a phrase, 'random acts of accuracy'.Nice, B.
My results with SK varies.
Some bricks have been great for punching paper,
Some have ended up as hunting ammo.
It's just my luck with purchasing on line.
My results with SK varies.
Some bricks have been great for punching paper,
Some have ended up as hunting ammo.
It's just my luck with purchasing on line.
@straightshooter1 Thanks
The only thing I think I'd like to see on these graphs is the environmental conditions, like for wind, which could be done by color coding the data points. This way, i'd also be able to see the performance as it relates to the conditions (like the wind).
Such an awesome graph. I wish I did something like this... I do have most of my 6x5's saved in Range Buddy, I should take a look and see what I've done. I kind of gave up on doing groups now that I started doing competitions, bot 3000 rounds of PMS, 7000 rounds of SK+ (training ammo), and 2000 rounds of C-X. What's interesting is my SK+ and C-X have the exact same dope. Chrono within 5-10fps of each other, and same POI. So I can go immediately from training to matches without changing anything.
I've been mainly shooting PMS though since it's only $7.50 a box vs $11 for C-X. NRL22 within 100yards, is always going to be PMS for me. I'll shoot C-X as I'm shooting out to 250-300 just for a slightly tighter consistency.
PMS being almost half the cost of Eley Match makes it probably one of the best performing rounds for the price.
Okay, since I got my new IBI barrel, here's the groups I tracked at 100 yards. Left is group size as I didn't do the math to convert to MOA. Now that I have a pretty graph, I might start tracking things again
@littlepod !! your results are so similar to mine ! Different shooter, different weapon - makes me think that the biggest variable by far is the ammo... (echoes of @justin amateur here )
)@straightshooter1 good idea ! ill have to improve my Excel skills to work out how to colour by another variable.
That is just trying to show the avg velocity per grup? So the bigger the vertical spread the worse the overall groups? Midas+ seems to go from 1010 to like 1080?
PMS goes from 1035 to 1120?
Actually it shows the velocity of each shot. the very high velocities are, in general, cold-bore shots. But it shows the variability of the velocities for each ammo type. And yes, in my 200 STR, Midas+ isnt very consistent.
Okay I'm not crazy then about cold bore... I've been really paying attention to it everytime I go to the range, and my first shot is always about .2-.3 mils high. It's pretty consistent... well I've only measured it the last 3 days, but the first 2 days it was 1.1" high, and today it was only about .75" high. I haven't tested how long it takes to be a cold bore yet though. In a competition, your rifle is usually sitting on the rack for 30-40minutes until the next stage... is that long enough for it to get cold?
I do remember missing high on both of my first shots in my match last weekend, now I know why...
@littlepod not crazy, no. I only have chrono experience from three guns, but all three of them tend to throw the first shot hot. Ive been trying to correlate the magnitude of the phenomenon to temperature/humidity/ammo temp/residual cleaning oil in the barrel/my grip/anything i can think of - no obvious correlation yet. I'm often shooting in temps not far above freezing so i would expect there to be dimensional changes in the chamber/barrel as the first few shots warm it up. Unfortunately i never have a hot day to see if that makes a difference.
Yeh I just started shooting this summer, but I didn't really know how / get decent at shooting until August. And now I have about 6 months of cooooold in front of me so I won't be able to see warm temperatures. I'm usually shooting around 36-40 degrees in the winter time, probably will get colder, but it's 40 now. I got a match today, 30min per stage rotation, so I will be able to see if that changes my cold bore impact.
