jackie schmidt
New member
Pretty Good Day at the Range With XBR 8208
A front blew through Houston last night, and finally producing a great day to do some serious testing of the XBR in some rather large temperature, and humidity, swings.
Got to Tomball early, and started shooting at 66 degrees. I tried the 31.5 load, and it had at least a bullet hole of verticle. I upped the charge to 31.8, still had some verticle, so I did the rest with the tuner. Got the Rifle shooting flat, but it seemed a tad wind sensitive. I started backing off on the seating depth untill I was jumping the Barts Boat Tails at least .005. This produced nice round groups in the mid to high one range.
I shot several groups under match conditions, (on the clock), all pretty good. I then decided to wait untill the temperature started to rise, to see if the load would stay reasonably put.
When it hit 80 degrees, I loaded up a group and the Rifle still shot pretty darned good, a little verticle, but I could still nail sub .200 groups with carefull attention to the conditions.
I waited a while longer, and about 3:00 in the afternoon, it hit 88 degrees, and the bottom fell out of the humidity at 22 percent. I loaded up again, and surprisingly, the groups still looked pretty darned good. I delibertly avoided any changes, just to see if the Rifle would stay in a reasonably competitive tune.
I set the Chronograph up, and that 31.8 grn load was hitting an average 3380 out of my Sporters 21.5 inch barrel.
This was the first day that we had a warm enough day to see how well the BRX would "stay in tune" throughout a fairly large temperature swing.
I never shot anything smaller than about a .160, but the Rifle never did anything stupid, like toss a shot against the condition, or up or down for no reason. All in all, I shot about 12 groups, none larger than about .220, the majority in the mid to high ones.
In the heat of the day, with the humidity in the low 20 percent range, I pulled out the 133 and shot the same load that I won the 200 yard HV with last week end. With the humidity that low, it is starting to get into "no mans land" with 133. The 30.8 grn load produced about 3460, and shot a couple of groups in the .180 range, not to bad in some tricky conditions.
I will admitt that I do like the XBR a more than I did yesterday. I did not go down into any load windows lower than the 31.2 I started with in the morning, the main aim was to see how well it stayed in tune through out the days shooting after arriving a a pretty good tune. The 3180 fps load seems to show no pressure signs.
As for cleaning, I saw none of the black fouling that others have reported. It seemed to clean just like 133, which when shot at the higher pressures, is extremely clean.
Gary Walters was also messing around with the XBR in his Rail, I think he was finding about the same thing as I, he was playing around with a lot of different seating depths, maybe he will comment on some of his findings...........jackie
A front blew through Houston last night, and finally producing a great day to do some serious testing of the XBR in some rather large temperature, and humidity, swings.
Got to Tomball early, and started shooting at 66 degrees. I tried the 31.5 load, and it had at least a bullet hole of verticle. I upped the charge to 31.8, still had some verticle, so I did the rest with the tuner. Got the Rifle shooting flat, but it seemed a tad wind sensitive. I started backing off on the seating depth untill I was jumping the Barts Boat Tails at least .005. This produced nice round groups in the mid to high one range.
I shot several groups under match conditions, (on the clock), all pretty good. I then decided to wait untill the temperature started to rise, to see if the load would stay reasonably put.
When it hit 80 degrees, I loaded up a group and the Rifle still shot pretty darned good, a little verticle, but I could still nail sub .200 groups with carefull attention to the conditions.
I waited a while longer, and about 3:00 in the afternoon, it hit 88 degrees, and the bottom fell out of the humidity at 22 percent. I loaded up again, and surprisingly, the groups still looked pretty darned good. I delibertly avoided any changes, just to see if the Rifle would stay in a reasonably competitive tune.
I set the Chronograph up, and that 31.8 grn load was hitting an average 3380 out of my Sporters 21.5 inch barrel.
This was the first day that we had a warm enough day to see how well the BRX would "stay in tune" throughout a fairly large temperature swing.
I never shot anything smaller than about a .160, but the Rifle never did anything stupid, like toss a shot against the condition, or up or down for no reason. All in all, I shot about 12 groups, none larger than about .220, the majority in the mid to high ones.
In the heat of the day, with the humidity in the low 20 percent range, I pulled out the 133 and shot the same load that I won the 200 yard HV with last week end. With the humidity that low, it is starting to get into "no mans land" with 133. The 30.8 grn load produced about 3460, and shot a couple of groups in the .180 range, not to bad in some tricky conditions.
I will admitt that I do like the XBR a more than I did yesterday. I did not go down into any load windows lower than the 31.2 I started with in the morning, the main aim was to see how well it stayed in tune through out the days shooting after arriving a a pretty good tune. The 3180 fps load seems to show no pressure signs.
As for cleaning, I saw none of the black fouling that others have reported. It seemed to clean just like 133, which when shot at the higher pressures, is extremely clean.
Gary Walters was also messing around with the XBR in his Rail, I think he was finding about the same thing as I, he was playing around with a lot of different seating depths, maybe he will comment on some of his findings...........jackie
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