Oh man, what a day it was. The mail man showed up with a package for me from ADCO. The Geissele SSA-E that I ordered Wednesday afternoon showed up today. Of course, I took the three minutes that it took to install it and off to the range I went. I took my 16" SS410 build that has a Nightforce 2.5-10X32 on top of it. Today's trip had a couple of purposes. The first was to see how my rifle shot with no flash hider and the second was to test the trigger.
As far as the trigger goes, it is better than the SSA, without qualification. Is it the best trigger for a bench gun? NO! Although lighter, it's still heavy by bench standards. It isn't as light as the last DMR that I shot. Is it the best trigger for a field rifle? ABSOLUTELY. The first stage is still kind of heavy. Heavy enough to let you know that you are squeezing the trigger. Is the second stage heavy? Maybe a bit (for target shooting), but it didn't matter. As soon as I started to squeeze, boom. Maybe not a break like glass, but VERY clean. I mean, really clean. I perceived no creep at all. Squeeze, boom. Simple as that.
Maybe some of you saw the SS410 build post that I put up a while back. I was shooting the SSA with the 3.5lb JP spring kit and I was doing OK. I was getting pretty consistent. Shooting good groups maybe half the time. Just to see if I could see a trend, I took pics of and measured every group that I shot today.
This is the first set of groups. The group on the bottom right is the only one that I shot today with the Vortex on the rifle. As soon as I put it on, the rifle exhibited that verticle stringing that it's been doing and I had been thinking all along that it was me. Maybe it wasn't. After shooting that group, I took the Vortex off of the rifle.
All of the other groups are marked for number of shots and group size. Take note of the 20 round groups. About a month ago, I was able to shoot a 20 round group that measured 1.2". Today, I was able to do it (or close to it) a few times.
I think I'm starting to show a level of consistency that I just couldn't get with the SSA. The SSA-E made a world of difference for me.
Oh, and get this. I walked into the office at the range to sign in and, get this, they had a Spike's lower in the case. I tried to leave without it, but, here's my rifle now with the Spike's lower, sans flash hider.
Not only did the SSA-E increase my consistency, but my rate of fire went up too.
I also have to give another plug for the SS410 barrel. I spent 2.5 hours at the range to day and fired all of the rounds shown above. The barrel's temp never got below HOT and it stayed consistent. As for the differences in point of impact, I was fiddling with the scope between groups getting it right on, instead of having it hit an inch high.