Post by GLSHOOTER on Jun 12, 2019 13:55:14 GMT -8
I managed to get the A-30 back out to the range with ammo loaded up about two months ago. Between weather, personal life and other uppers screaming louder this one had been pushed back a bit. I wanted to try a new bullet in the tube and revisit an old one. The Speer 130 HP varmint pill is one that has shot great in all the .308 bored guns I have previously shot the 150 Hornady Interlock and it has performed adequately in the past. With the new TO five groove polygon rifling.
Loads for the day were all in twice fired Federal brass made up using Hornady 30 Herrett dies held off the shell holder. All were primed with CCI 450 primers. No bullets were crimped. The upper is only 16” so velocities should be ballpark with the old barrel that is also 16”. Temperatures for the day ran between 80 and 89 for the A-30 testing. Winds were negligible and that was a blessing as we’ve been having quite a bit of that lately.
I had bought a base plate for the LabRadar so set up was uber-fast that morning not having to mess with aligning it on the tripod was definite plus along with the convenience of being able to just reach up and do string resets while seated it was worth the $40.00. Targets as usual were ¾” dots at 100 yards. Front rest and rear bag were used again with my match lower pinned to the upper. I swapped in the Young 6.8 BCG out of the 22-NXS as I continue to test it for reliability in everything I can find that I shoot that is 6.8 based. It hadn’t failed me yet so another data point was available for the day on the two uppers I would use.
I wanted to run the 130 Speers first so I got it all together. I had cleaned the snot out of the barrel last month and it was as clean as I could get it. I ran a lightly oiled patch down the bore and loaded up the first set of three over a charge of AA 2015. I wasn’t real concerned for accuracy other than getting the scope settings to get me close to the dots. The cold bore bullet went out and the primer looked good. The next two looked about 2” higher but grouped relatively closely. The actual measurement later gave me a 2.293 for three but the two went into 0.665. Certainly not jump up and down and yell Wahoo!! quaility but those two made me think just maybe I had a potential shooter here.
I moved on up and shot my charge levels of 30.0 and 30.5 next. These were five shot groups for both of them vs. three. I often shoot my lowest charge at three because swapping from powder is not advantageous for consistent results. I am parsimonious and can’t bring myself to shoot a couple of foulers with each powder change in to the dirt do rather than do that I put them though a target to at least get some feedback on my $0.60. Velocities came up nicely from the original 29.5 load starting at 2434 it moved up to 2457 and 2486. Not barn burner speeds but not bad either. The groups were looking decent too and based on what I saw I could have been happy stopping right there but then I had a whole bunch more to play with. This shows my effort for the AA 2015.
Moving along to my second powder choice of IMR 4198 I was hopeful that things would continue along in the same vein as the last two groups. I started out at 26.8 on this one and moved up in 0.5 increments; experience does have its benefits here, and was happy to see even at the low level it was within 18 FPS of the 2015 top load. That always is nice but would the groups hold? The three shot fouler had a leaker to the right but the 27.3 wanted to shoot and a bit of a last filth shot on the 27.8 ruined the last one from stellar to so so. Such is life. The nice thing is at the 27.8 and 2540 FPS I have exceeded the Hodgdon top load for the 30-30 in a 24” tube. Here is a peak at all three levels. I believe any of these would do. BTW the four in the bottom target went in to 0.297 CTC.
Things were looking decent on my end and down range so I proceeded up to the batch loaded with 1200R. I have done virtually nothing with this one but it did show promise. Starting with my three shot foulers I had the almost expected two and one pattern with the first shot always straying from the last two. The clock told e 2555 so I am starting off velocity wise where the 4198 stopped. I will not complain of that if the primers looked good and the groups hold. The next two up were clustering nicely and I ended up at 2644 for a top end a respectable 0.733. Across the board the powder behaved nicely with nothing that caused any alarm bells to go off. Certainly a usable mix of powder and bullet here that I want to explore further.
So far I have shot three powders at three levels . In nine groups I had eight that were sub-MOA. I pretty well always view the first group of the day as a warm up. That being said I had one less powder to try. RL 10 has been performing in all the 6.8 wildcats so I hoped that his one would continue on here. This time the foulers said that they were done playing and laid down one that did make me kind of wet myself a bit. Speed at 30.8 gave me that magical 2500+ that I want out of this barrel and bullet weight. Clocking in at 2535 I was one happy camper at the table and at the target stand. I was still bumping 0.5 grains and the speeds came up linearly at 32 FPS per pump. That is always nice to see and I wished I had loaded one more up top to see if the slope would hold. Ending up at 2599.37 (the LR reads in 100’ths) I was pleased. Ragged hole potential is present again with me blowing the last shot out of the four on the last target. I really need to get this thing put in a bolt gun and shoot it. Those “flyers” that are self induced would go away then. You be the judge on the usefulness on this one. The average for three groups was 0.589 BTW.
So the 130’s were history at this point. My evaluation of them was that I was able to exceed the 24” 30-30 Winchester speeds easily with a 16” tube. Given that most 30-30’s are not shot out of a 24” barrel I can comfortably say I have about 250 FPS over any same same length on that one. For grins I reviewed the numbers for a 125 grain pill in the 7.62X39. Hodgdon lists it as a 24” test platform. Once again I easily exceed anything coming out of that one. The A-30has a bit more capacity than the Russian Short and thanks to the higher pressures being used the velocity comes up. Across the board all primers were rounded. I saw only the slightest of ejector markings on these loads. I need to round the ejector on this bolt a bit more and I think even those would go away then. The bullet would do fine on whitetails at these velocities as it would not be overly explosive in these ranges. I’ve shoot thousands of them on steel and they will hold together pretty well at reduced speeds.
I had brought along the 150 Interlocks loaded at 2.300 to see what would happen. This barrel is a 1:10 twist whereas the other I have shot was 1:11. I noted that these were loaded out longer than my previous batches that were 2.90 and 2.295. The chambers on these are very close as my BHW tube was one of the first produced and had shoulder placement free bore almost right. I did note that I had only shot two of the day’s powders previously.
For the day I shot RL10, AA 2015, AA 2200 and 1680. Groups were abysmal for my usage. Reviewing the previous numbers on the other tube I found that groups with this bullet hovered right at 1.125 average plus or minus and this none of these would keep up for the three charge weights. Only one reached the previous benchmark out of 10 tries. I saved the last two batches of AA 1680 as at that point even I could see the writing on the wall!! Speeds for the AA 2015 and AA 2200 were almost identical to those previously shot. This batch ran CCI 450’s and my previous testing was with Remington 7 ½’s.
The Hornady 150’s were disappointing and have me scratching my head. Compared to the 150 Sierra Pro Hunters they did not shoot as well previously so it may be that this one likes the more pointy bullet or just likes Green over Red. I wish I had had more of the 130’s loaded up that day just to verify that my scope had not gone South. Everything was tight and I was still sober so I can’t blame it on anything else. The temp had come up to 89 but I’m certain that was not an issue. This proves the old adage that “Sometimes the Dragon Wins.”
I’ll hammer out this last conundrum and add more info on other pills and powders.
Greg
Loads for the day were all in twice fired Federal brass made up using Hornady 30 Herrett dies held off the shell holder. All were primed with CCI 450 primers. No bullets were crimped. The upper is only 16” so velocities should be ballpark with the old barrel that is also 16”. Temperatures for the day ran between 80 and 89 for the A-30 testing. Winds were negligible and that was a blessing as we’ve been having quite a bit of that lately.
I had bought a base plate for the LabRadar so set up was uber-fast that morning not having to mess with aligning it on the tripod was definite plus along with the convenience of being able to just reach up and do string resets while seated it was worth the $40.00. Targets as usual were ¾” dots at 100 yards. Front rest and rear bag were used again with my match lower pinned to the upper. I swapped in the Young 6.8 BCG out of the 22-NXS as I continue to test it for reliability in everything I can find that I shoot that is 6.8 based. It hadn’t failed me yet so another data point was available for the day on the two uppers I would use.
I wanted to run the 130 Speers first so I got it all together. I had cleaned the snot out of the barrel last month and it was as clean as I could get it. I ran a lightly oiled patch down the bore and loaded up the first set of three over a charge of AA 2015. I wasn’t real concerned for accuracy other than getting the scope settings to get me close to the dots. The cold bore bullet went out and the primer looked good. The next two looked about 2” higher but grouped relatively closely. The actual measurement later gave me a 2.293 for three but the two went into 0.665. Certainly not jump up and down and yell Wahoo!! quaility but those two made me think just maybe I had a potential shooter here.
I moved on up and shot my charge levels of 30.0 and 30.5 next. These were five shot groups for both of them vs. three. I often shoot my lowest charge at three because swapping from powder is not advantageous for consistent results. I am parsimonious and can’t bring myself to shoot a couple of foulers with each powder change in to the dirt do rather than do that I put them though a target to at least get some feedback on my $0.60. Velocities came up nicely from the original 29.5 load starting at 2434 it moved up to 2457 and 2486. Not barn burner speeds but not bad either. The groups were looking decent too and based on what I saw I could have been happy stopping right there but then I had a whole bunch more to play with. This shows my effort for the AA 2015.
Moving along to my second powder choice of IMR 4198 I was hopeful that things would continue along in the same vein as the last two groups. I started out at 26.8 on this one and moved up in 0.5 increments; experience does have its benefits here, and was happy to see even at the low level it was within 18 FPS of the 2015 top load. That always is nice but would the groups hold? The three shot fouler had a leaker to the right but the 27.3 wanted to shoot and a bit of a last filth shot on the 27.8 ruined the last one from stellar to so so. Such is life. The nice thing is at the 27.8 and 2540 FPS I have exceeded the Hodgdon top load for the 30-30 in a 24” tube. Here is a peak at all three levels. I believe any of these would do. BTW the four in the bottom target went in to 0.297 CTC.
Things were looking decent on my end and down range so I proceeded up to the batch loaded with 1200R. I have done virtually nothing with this one but it did show promise. Starting with my three shot foulers I had the almost expected two and one pattern with the first shot always straying from the last two. The clock told e 2555 so I am starting off velocity wise where the 4198 stopped. I will not complain of that if the primers looked good and the groups hold. The next two up were clustering nicely and I ended up at 2644 for a top end a respectable 0.733. Across the board the powder behaved nicely with nothing that caused any alarm bells to go off. Certainly a usable mix of powder and bullet here that I want to explore further.
So far I have shot three powders at three levels . In nine groups I had eight that were sub-MOA. I pretty well always view the first group of the day as a warm up. That being said I had one less powder to try. RL 10 has been performing in all the 6.8 wildcats so I hoped that his one would continue on here. This time the foulers said that they were done playing and laid down one that did make me kind of wet myself a bit. Speed at 30.8 gave me that magical 2500+ that I want out of this barrel and bullet weight. Clocking in at 2535 I was one happy camper at the table and at the target stand. I was still bumping 0.5 grains and the speeds came up linearly at 32 FPS per pump. That is always nice to see and I wished I had loaded one more up top to see if the slope would hold. Ending up at 2599.37 (the LR reads in 100’ths) I was pleased. Ragged hole potential is present again with me blowing the last shot out of the four on the last target. I really need to get this thing put in a bolt gun and shoot it. Those “flyers” that are self induced would go away then. You be the judge on the usefulness on this one. The average for three groups was 0.589 BTW.
So the 130’s were history at this point. My evaluation of them was that I was able to exceed the 24” 30-30 Winchester speeds easily with a 16” tube. Given that most 30-30’s are not shot out of a 24” barrel I can comfortably say I have about 250 FPS over any same same length on that one. For grins I reviewed the numbers for a 125 grain pill in the 7.62X39. Hodgdon lists it as a 24” test platform. Once again I easily exceed anything coming out of that one. The A-30has a bit more capacity than the Russian Short and thanks to the higher pressures being used the velocity comes up. Across the board all primers were rounded. I saw only the slightest of ejector markings on these loads. I need to round the ejector on this bolt a bit more and I think even those would go away then. The bullet would do fine on whitetails at these velocities as it would not be overly explosive in these ranges. I’ve shoot thousands of them on steel and they will hold together pretty well at reduced speeds.
I had brought along the 150 Interlocks loaded at 2.300 to see what would happen. This barrel is a 1:10 twist whereas the other I have shot was 1:11. I noted that these were loaded out longer than my previous batches that were 2.90 and 2.295. The chambers on these are very close as my BHW tube was one of the first produced and had shoulder placement free bore almost right. I did note that I had only shot two of the day’s powders previously.
For the day I shot RL10, AA 2015, AA 2200 and 1680. Groups were abysmal for my usage. Reviewing the previous numbers on the other tube I found that groups with this bullet hovered right at 1.125 average plus or minus and this none of these would keep up for the three charge weights. Only one reached the previous benchmark out of 10 tries. I saved the last two batches of AA 1680 as at that point even I could see the writing on the wall!! Speeds for the AA 2015 and AA 2200 were almost identical to those previously shot. This batch ran CCI 450’s and my previous testing was with Remington 7 ½’s.
The Hornady 150’s were disappointing and have me scratching my head. Compared to the 150 Sierra Pro Hunters they did not shoot as well previously so it may be that this one likes the more pointy bullet or just likes Green over Red. I wish I had had more of the 130’s loaded up that day just to verify that my scope had not gone South. Everything was tight and I was still sober so I can’t blame it on anything else. The temp had come up to 89 but I’m certain that was not an issue. This proves the old adage that “Sometimes the Dragon Wins.”
I’ll hammer out this last conundrum and add more info on other pills and powders.
Greg