Thread: Testing a conventional approach to load development

Originally Posted by STC

Other factors that have not been taken into account are warming up of the barrel, wind, temperature changes, parallax...

Shooting a 20 shot group to try and see a difference between 0.25 and 1 MOA essentially covers what you want to see in a shit ton of noise.

4x 5rd groups actually.


Barrel cooled between 5rd groups (even though it doesn't actually matter), fired each load alternately to minimise any differences in fouling etc. Fired 10rd of each then went and did other stuff (helping others sort guns) for a couple of hours then fired the last 10 of each. Wind very low and consistent, <1ms 12 o'clock. Temperature consistent at 12 degrees C through the day (kestrel). Parallax dialled out.

Shooting high numbers of shots through other rifles with different loads clearly demonstrates differences in precision, e.g. .223 with handloads 0.9moa group for 20, 1.5moa for 20 with factory "match" ammunition.


How do you propose to quantify a valid understanding of the real precision capability of a system?