OK, guys...check it out. I just got in from a 16-hour day at the range and at the reloading bench.



First a big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped up to this point - and a special thanks to AR15barrels who put the bug in my ear about tuning at 400 for vertical and more-or-less ignoring the wind for the moment. That was the single best piece of advice that I have listened to in a long time. And the next best goes to whoever suggested trying the 178gr HPBT. Holy shit, that's not just a little different from the AMAX, it's a LOT different. Third best was quit being a pussy and push that thing a little. What I found out was that loads that would probably smoke primers in my gun with the AMAX yielded completely normal-looking primers and case heads with the HPBT, and will leave me enough velocity at 1000 to actually get to 1200 supersonically.



Left the house this morning and I picked up a couple of hundred 178 HPBTs on the way out to the farm just to give them a spin, but not having read much about them I didn't think they'd be much different from the AMAX. My intent was to shoot my then-current best load (so I thought) at 400 to check out its vertical dispersion. On the way out, I loaded up 5 HPBTs using the same data (43.0 of Varget) and went outside to the range and fired ten rounds at 400. Meh. 5" and a little bit of change. No good. So, says I to myself, I'm going to start pouring on the throttle and see what happens. I start going up in .5gr increments watching for pressure signs, and left the chronograph in the box for now.



As I kept increasing my charge, a funny thing kept happening. The vertical ES kept shrinking....and shrinking...and shrinking...I started going up in .2 increments now....and shrinking.....then BOOM it opened back up again. Back down to the load giving the smallest vertical ES (these were 5 round groups), and it does it again - 1.741". I look at the primers and cases, and they look exactly the same as they did at 43.0 - no flattening, just the slight cratering I was experiencing before, no ejector rub marks (though those look different in an FN, because it's a slot rather than a plunger). YGBSM, I think to myself.



So I run it back to 100 to chronograph it - and I get a .133" 5-round group, and a velocity in the believable range for the charge, I'm just amazed at the lack of pressure signs, especially since it's 95 degrees and bright/sunny. I'm pushing this 178gr HPBT to 2730 with no pressure signs. Now I'm curious, and I look up the BC - according to Hornady it's .530 (again, holy shit) which if BulletFlight isn't completely dicked up means that it should arrive at 1000 traveling 1400fps, taking 9.3mrad of elevation to get from 100 to 1000. For ****in' real?



I go inside and start processing brass, and I load 5 rounds of the best load in unfired brass to shoot at dusk when the wind drops off. I went out at 2100 and there was still some 1-4 variable winds, but I figured I'd take a whack at it anyway.



I fire off five quick shots and race down the levee to pull the target.



Result: Vertical ES of 1.189", and a horizontal spread of 3.29".



SOLD to the man with the green FN!



The winning load:



Hornady 178gr HPBT

New Lapua brass

New CCI BR-2 primer

45.9gr Varget

COAL base to ogive 3.133" using Sinclair ogive tool

Loaded round neck OD .337"



Loaded on a Redding T-7 with Redding standard dies, charges weighed with a PACT combo scale/dispenser. I threw back anything that wasn't dead nuts on 45.9gr.



Avg. MV 2730fps, and I no longer trust the ES reading on my chronograph, so I'm not going to give it. I will say, however, that 2.1 mils of elevation indicated by BulletFlight to get to 400 from 100 was dead-nuts on the money, so I'm going to guess the velocity is correct.



Gun is a 24" barreled FN A3G, 1:12 CL barrel.



I spent the last two and a half hours loading 100 of them for the match next weekend. Hand weighed each charge, etc.etc. The only question I have now is that the Redding seating die seems to be leaving some kind of circumferential mark on the ogive - do I need some kind of special VLD seating stem for these bullets? The AMAX never has any marks. They don't seem to affect accuracy, at least not at the level I'm operating at, but I can't imagine they're adding anything.