on December 23, 2009 11:43 AM
Hsoi and I had a good morning with the chronograph. He is working up a hunting load for his AR-15, and needed to chronograph them. Also he had some .38 Special reloads to test.
I have a really cheap chronograph (cheap as in low cost), but damned if it doesn't work better than some of the more expensive ones. I've never bothered with the screens, and I have even shot it with a 9mm, and it still keeps working. It doesn't do printouts or remote displays, or calculate averages and standard deviation, but for the money and ease of use it kicks ass.
Anyway, with that out of the way.
We spent a while on the .223 hunting loads and determined a few things:
New Remington brass sucks. These were by no means hot loads and the primers were starting to back out.
Powder didn't really make all that much difference. If you have a reasonable velocity expectation pretty much all the book loads can do it.
Minimum loads don't have very good consistency. We saw some spreads over 100 fps.
I also chronographed some real Hornady TAP 5.56 and I have to say I am even more pleased with my "zombie" load now.
Here's the result of that:
Only one data point over 2700 fps. I think Hornady is a little generous on their 2665 fps average out of a 14.5" barrel.
So, I'm getting about 70 fps more and have a much more consistent velocity. At the end of our rifle shooting we shot about 30 or so of my zombie load and every shot was over 2700 fps and very consistent. I didn't pay too much attention to the numbers, but I was solidly in that 2700-2750 fps range that I wanted to be in. Brass looks better today after I messed with the extractor. No obvious signs of overpressure. I really like it.
Also got to shoot some Buffalo Bore out of Hsoi's snubbie. That's fun. :)-~
I have a really cheap chronograph (cheap as in low cost), but damned if it doesn't work better than some of the more expensive ones. I've never bothered with the screens, and I have even shot it with a 9mm, and it still keeps working. It doesn't do printouts or remote displays, or calculate averages and standard deviation, but for the money and ease of use it kicks ass.
Anyway, with that out of the way.
We spent a while on the .223 hunting loads and determined a few things:
New Remington brass sucks. These were by no means hot loads and the primers were starting to back out.
Powder didn't really make all that much difference. If you have a reasonable velocity expectation pretty much all the book loads can do it.
Minimum loads don't have very good consistency. We saw some spreads over 100 fps.
I also chronographed some real Hornady TAP 5.56 and I have to say I am even more pleased with my "zombie" load now.
Here's the result of that:
| 2664.666667 |
| 38.5918817 |
Only one data point over 2700 fps. I think Hornady is a little generous on their 2665 fps average out of a 14.5" barrel.
So, I'm getting about 70 fps more and have a much more consistent velocity. At the end of our rifle shooting we shot about 30 or so of my zombie load and every shot was over 2700 fps and very consistent. I didn't pay too much attention to the numbers, but I was solidly in that 2700-2750 fps range that I wanted to be in. Brass looks better today after I messed with the extractor. No obvious signs of overpressure. I really like it.
Also got to shoot some Buffalo Bore out of Hsoi's snubbie. That's fun. :)-~
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