Got to test some of the new Rocky Mountain Reloading 69 grain bullets today.

24.3 grains Reloader 15 in a once-fired Wolf case.
Bullet seated to magazine length.

Firing distance 200 yards.

All firing prone, sling-supported only.

White Oak Armament Service Rifle upper (Wilson barrel @ approximately 2500 round-count).

4x Leupold scope.

After first three shots, made slight reticle adjustment (down 0.2 mil, right 0.1 mil)

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For comparison Hornady 62-grain FMJ with 25.7 grains Winchester 748

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I've had similar results with that bullet using 25.0gr of TAC.

Thanks for posting this.  What is the twist rate on your barrel?

1:7 twist

This upper from White Oak:

https://www.whiteoakarmament.com/a4-service-rifle-optic-upper-post-ban-1-7.html

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Very nice, I'm always impressed by what people can do with these service rifle builds.

Are the three shots in the top left your first ones? This is a 200yd target, so 3" X ring right?

Two snake eyes at 10:00 and one at 12:00 that “felt loose” when I sent it.

Target is NRA SR target. X-ring is 3 inch(ish).

Nice shooting.

I just ordered 500 of these bullets to test out.

Any experience using CFE223?

I have a little bit of Reloder15 to try out, but I have a lot of CFE223.

No hands-on experience with CFE 223.

But it must be a bulky powder.

Quickload says 100% loading density (26.58) only makes 48,000 PSI with a 69-grain.

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I've never been able to get RL15 to shoot worth a darn in any of my .224 guns.  It's my preferred powder with a Savage 10T in 308 however.

Your group at 200 yards, prone & slung with a 4x scope is impressive.  I'm trying really, really hard not to get some of these 69gr to tinker with.

ETA CFE223 is a ball powder that looks very similar to H335.

I've gotten good results across several different rounds so I piled up CFE223 when it was available, and that's what I used to test these bullets.

I think I've settled on 25.3gr, and got about 2725fps from an 18" Criterion barrel. Shot some about 2 weeks ago and still ended just above 1" (1.13" or something IIRC), but shooting conditions weren't excellent that day so I'll take it and guess I can get under an inch on a better day.

I would have liked a little more velocity, but for the kind of shooting I do this will work and the accuracy meets my goal. Price is right too. I'll probably stick with 77gr Noslers if I want to throw darts, and these will work for everything else.

Shot the 69-grain RMR bullets again today.

https://www.rmrbullets.com/shop/bullets/rifle/224-5-56mm/224-69-gr-rmr-jacketed-hollow-point-boat-tail-3-gun-hunter-bullets-new/

Pretty cool when you can get BTHP “match” bullets for the same price as POS FMJ bullets.

Three different loads.
Varget
TAC
AA2520

All at 200 yards, sling supported ONLY.

Please note that the 69RMR testing occurred AFTER I had already tested another gun from the same position, 24 shots for a different project.

It was a bit of a challenge to keep shooting another 36 shots (three 12-shot strings) from prone, sling-supported position.

60 flawless shots off the belly with service rifle is a challenge.

I say that as a warning/excuse for a few bad shots that happened deep into this belly-shooting session

Each target received two “sighters” and then ten shots for group.
I didn’t click sights, or favor at all, after the two sighters on each target.

You may notice in the pics some ball-point pen notations. The ball-point pen is the marking for the sighters. I made a big adjustment down after the first shot with the Varget target. I only adjusted off sighters a click or two on the TAC and 2520 targets.

These are the loads tested:

VARGET
69 RMR
25.6 grains – 108% density
Pressure – 57,580 psi(Quickload estimate)
2936 fps (Quickload estimate)

I can’t explain the one errant high shot. Fucking high 7. It looked good through the scope when I sent it. But obviously it was well out of the group.

Except for that stupid high 7, this target had the makings of scoring 100. The whole group was high. But I was only shooting for group – not for score per se.

I love Varget. But you can pretty much “only find it at a museum” these days.

Score 96-3x

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AA2520
69 RMR
25.2 grains – 98% density
Pressure – 50,761 psi (Quickload estimate)
2878 fps (Quickload estimate)

This target went pretty well. I felt like I had a few “loose” shots, but they came up on-call in the direction I saw them go loose. Corner-shot nines.
A master score at least. But I expect high-master scores from belly-prone.

Another 96-3x

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TAC
69RMR
25.8 grains – 98% density
27.5 – measure
Pressure – 53,884 psi (Quickload estimate)
2855 fps (Quickload estimate)

In a competitive setting, I would have clicked sights right at least a click (and probably picked up 4 points)

I was pretty damn tired at this point. Although the group is pretty damn good. I just hate it when I send an 8 sailing just out of lameness. I saw it go there. I’m sorry.

95-4x



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In case anybody wondered what the primers looked like on the ammo loaded with the 69's

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And the boltface. Its pretty smoked from shooting really slow powder and recovered .30 carbine primers. The slow powder didn't make enough pressure to make the primers seal, so there were lots of leaks. Those aren't my gray hairs stuck to it. That's paper towel lint.

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That is good shooting, thank you for posting this source.

Nice write up WEG,Varget is the shit. All my keeper loads are V.

More Rocky Mountain Reloading 69 testing.

200 yards.

10 shots fired from the magazine, continuous fire (approximately 60 seconds firing time).

All firing from prone position, sling-supported only.

25.8 grains TAC

Twice-fired mixed Winchester brass.

Recovered .30 carbine primer

White Oak service rifle upper - Wilson barrel at about 3000 rounds.

Leupold 4x scope.

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Good work, and thank you for posting.

I must report that 25.8 grains TAC with the 69RMR bullet and the recovered .30 carbine primers is BLANKING PRIMERS.

I fired about 100 rounds of this load this week.

Started having malfunctions (weak strikes and stuck cases) today.

When I took the bolt carrier apart these chunks of primer metal fell out.

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Primers showing cratering, extrusion, and blanking.

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These are the recovered .30 carbine primers.

They are 0.002" to 0.003" THINNER than magnum primers or CCI 41's.

Firing pin (hard to phtotograph tip) looking rough.

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Bolt still hanging in there.

Ironic that all the erosion you see here was from a completely different lot of ammo that used a TOO SLOW powder, and which allowed primers to leak due not making ENOUGH pressure.

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Pretty satisfied with the Rocky Mountain Reloading 69’s.

25.0 grains Varget -thrown charges (I don’t own a trickler).
New primed WOLF brass with no case preparation except dump-powder, stuff-bullet.

200 yards.

Yellow circles were sighters.
Came down 2 clicks and shot the high red circle.
Came down 2 more clicks and shot the red-circle X.
Clicks are worth third-minute.

I played with windage a couple clicks during the string.

Impact was on-call for all shots except one. Which is pretty good for me, and whatever constitutes “ability” to correctly call shots.

I like to work the top left side of the 10-ring because my tendency is to yank shots low-right. At least that’s my excuse for low X-count on this target.

Barrel is White Oak (Wilson?) at about 3000 rounds.

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I had good results with them last Thursday. 25.3Varget CCI#41 LC 18 cases. Groups not as tight as yours,but a 40 round string was good enough to hold the 10 ring.Every shot was not carefully aimed as I would in a match. A2 Colt.

Was that the SR, or MR52 target like W_E_G's?

SR-C. Also those RMRs seat very consistently. I wish I still had some PPU 69 HPBTs to compare to them.

The PPU 75gr HPBT's I had were very inconsistent. Like an OAL difference of .025.

ETA: I was aiming for 2.25 and had loading issues with mags and that's when I found this. I basically loaded 30 rounds, found the longest ones (2.27x can't quite remember), adjusted those to be 2.255, then reseated the rest and kept loading them like that. Ended up with a range of 2.238 to 2.263 or something. I loaded 1,500 +/- of them.

Exactly what I did,but with 69s! They shot pretty good but most went on steel. The bases werent as flat as the RMRs either.

Testing Rocky Mountain Reloading 69’s again today. 200 yards. Prone, sling-supported service rifle. Using an oddball-size reduced sticker in middle of SR target. Smallest ring is a bit bigger than a correct reduced 600 x-ring. Next-larger ring is a bit smaller than a correct reduced 600 10-ring. 10 shots. 25.0 grains TAC in a new Wolf case. The lowest shot (out at 5 o’clock) was shot #2. My position“felt” sloppy on that shot.

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For comparison.

Same deal, but 77SMK with 24.2 Varget

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Very nice. Thanks for sharing!

Nice job dude.

Here are my most recent results:

ZQI/MKE once fired 556 brass trimmed to 1.750, swaged primer pocket, no flash hole work
Primed with F205GM
Varget 24.5, 24.7, 25.0, 25.3
RMR 3GH seated to 2.260" -.004", +0.0"

Fed from a Lancer mag into a 18" Shilen srp barrel, fired through CE chrony, 75f ~50% humidity. I shot a few sighters from the 24.5 loadings on a lower target, so the subsequent groups are deviations from that zero. My hold was center red for all groups, 100yds.

Results (5 shot groups)
24.5gr - 0.59moa - 2862(avgfps) - SD 20
24.7gr - 0.72moa - 2843 - SD 23
25.0gr - 0.75moa - 2884 - SD 28
25.3gr - 1.05moa - 2910 - SD 22

Going to try to add some pics here...

https://imgur.com/a/5Qg7h1Y

https://ibb.co/VqRwhMq

^^ I shoot my test loads clockwise from top left, center target hits were just screwing around.

https://ibb.co/dWRPXcD

https://ibb.co/C0pcKjs

https://ibb.co/9np6VkH

https://ibb.co/zRN726s

I want to play with more test loads in the 24.5-25 range, but I'm going to try the 2.230" seating depth with the 24.5 first.

Absolutely beautiful range. Nice shooting.

Thank you