Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Accuracy expectations?

I put my first AR together a while back with the following components:

Stiller Lower
VLTOR MUR upper
Black Hole 18" barrel with mid length gas system
Geissele SSA-E trigger
A2 buffer tube, buffer, spring and stock.
13" Troy Tactical VTAC Alpha handguard.

Loaded a bunch of ammo with range brass which I prepped and sorted, with a random load of TAC (24gr, IIRC) behind 68gr Hornady BTHPs.

Shot a 10 shot group at 100m and this is what I got. The grid is 1cm increments. I was pleased, but am wondering if I should do some methodical load development in the pursuit of better. Can I expect much better out of an AR?

John

Thats pretty good. Sort your brass by headstamp and I bet your accuracy improves. 1-1.25 MOA is about what I get with mixed brass reloads. With a good hand load, I am usually good for a consistent 3/4 MOA. I squeeze out 1/2 MOA 3 shot groups all the time but 5-10 shot groups open it up a little bit.

I get good results with Varget for some reason, I use WW brass and with 65 grain Sierra's, my cheap Colt pencil barreled gun will turn in under 3/4 MOA for just 3 shots however. For the rounds you fired that is pretty good.

No clue what a black hole barrel is capable of...

But with a few guns we did all on our own years ago, probably close to 18 years ago, Krieger tubes chambered and we assembled, I managed a 5 shot group around 1.25 inches also. At 600 yards.

What I expect and is my goal is .5 MOA for 10 shot groups, and I generally test for that at 300 yards trying to get to 1.5 inch groups. I will settle for as bad as 2, but if worse than that I pull the barrel after trying other thigns and replace it.

Fairly standard load to test barrel ability is LC or WW brass, 25.0 Varget, CCI BR4 and 69 sierra match king at 2.250 OAL.

What kind of velocity do you get from that load?

From what I've seen published on set-ups like that, that is pretty typical. You may do a little better, down to maybe 3/4", but that is pretty darn good as-is.

You know too, it can be tough to get the absolute best groups out of an AR shooting from a bench & bags.

What sights did you use?

Can't recall, its been about 96 or so since we quit shooting Varget in the 223, but that load was pretty much a blind given if you needed something to run with and no time to test etc.. in the AR.

cbmjr, I think you would find yourself right around 2500 fps or a fraction higher with the 25.0/69 load rost shared with you.

Randy

I would think faster than that, but maybe 18 looses lots of speed.

I would think that load should have approached 2850 in a 20 inch tube. IIRC.

I know I"ve never run a heavy bullet as slow as 2500 in a 20. Not even a 90.

But 25 used to be towards the top pressure wise. Of course like anything Varget has varied in burn rate from lot to lot at times.

I've ran 24.5 with the 69's before and want to think i was getting around 2700-2750 from an 18" Noveske. Lately I've been shooting nothing but 77's but I have a few hundred 69's left. I may try out that load and see how they do.

Thanks.

Yeah, you should get about 2,800+ fps with that Varget load. Depends on your chamber & round count on the barrel.

I may have been wrong. I am going to check my noted later this evening.
I started thinking on the way home that I push a 62 gr. Barnes with a similar amount of Varget much faster than my 2500.

Randy

Sierra lists 24.9 grs at 2700 and 26.1 at 2850 from a 20" barrel at 2.260".

Sierra's accuracy load (IIRC 25.2) has been hot in some of my barrels, not in some others. All Wyldes. It was primer piercing in a CLE.

As usual, start low,work up. YMMV.

I appreciate the responses. Consensus seems to be it might do a little better, so I'll work with it a little more. Gonna stay with TAC though. It just meters too nice to ignore for high volume shooting.

John

I got a bunch of TAC which does fine with 62 TSX just seems varget makes a more accurate load with the Sierra bullets for me anyway

Varget never produced the velocity I wanted in 223 or 22-250, it does produce some accurate loads but so does TAC. I've ran TAC with 50's to 77's and have never been disappointed.

TAC has been my favorite .223 powder for 69's and 77's. I have recently been using RL-15 and Varget due to TAC becoming almost extinct. Can't find that stuff anywhere.

TAC is a good powder. But to think you have to throw accurate charges of Varget is folly often. Even if you are off a few tenths, if you are in a sweet spot, it won't matter at all.

Have run a LOT of Varget and RL15 through dillons over the years and continued to win matches. Just FWIW.

If I had to start over again and couldn't use N540 in matches, I'd look to see if TAC was temperature insensitive enough for our temps and if so, run with it. Its produced some good groups and velocities with 77s for us over the years in one particular match we shot wiht a lot of differnet barrels between team members.

I only have a dozen or so Black Hole barrels but I can say that it is almost certainly capable of more. I've seen lots of groups down in the 3's and 4's with a 2 thrown in to get the juices flowing occasionally. Drop over to their forum and look over some of the goodness.

Greg