Thread: 22 RF Tuner strategies?

Tuners on Rimfires are a mine field of Witchery .
I’ve played with Tuners for about 20 years ( shot competitive .22 benchrest for years ) and still use a Tuner on my Tikka T1x .
Rimfires are all about ammo , it’s as simple as that .
At distances out to 50m you will often find numerous different loads that will shoot well , find the one that shoots best and fine tune it .
When you start to extend your range to 100m and further you often find the best at 50m is no longer the best at 100/200/300
The quality and consistency of the ammo is now the major factor.
You need to chronograph different ammo types and find the one that has the best SD and ES figures, don’t worry about its grouping abilities, just find the most consistent.
Then use your tuner to get the best results you can with that ammo .
.22lr ballistics are so bad at extended ranges that just a few fps can result in many inches of vertical and wind dispersion.
You can get away with variance at 50m , and I’ve had some of the worst statistical ammo shoot the best at 50m .
My advice is find the best ammo you can without the tuner .
Install the tuner and starting from zero setting shoot 10 shot groups .
Work out how many clicks are in a full rotation of the tuner and divide it by three .
Shoot a 10 shot group then turn the tuner a third of the way around and shoot another etc etc .
You should shoot enough groups that you have made a minimum of at least three full rotations ( more is better)
Analyse your results and find the three best settings you achieved.
Then start refining those either side of that setting in smaller increments.
If your shooting is good enough fundamentally you will be seeing very minor differences once you have narrowed down the settings.
Tuners work , but they don’t perform magic.
To fully tune a rifle/tuner combo you need to shoot a lot of ammo to confirm that your results are not anomalies and are in fact real data .