Extremely late range report.

When last we met our intrepid rifle n00b, he had received some advise for the wise old men at the range.

This time, he went to the range equipped with that new knowledge, and also toted his father-in-law along. His father in law, being from England, gets dragged along to the range with his every visit because, hey, where's he going to get an opportunity to do this where he lives?

Firearms:
M-14, 7.62x51 NATO, 6x-20x 56mm scope
AR-15 with .22LR dedicated upper, 1x 40mm reflex sight

Ranges:
50 yards, one target .22
100 yards, one target .22, one target 7.62
200 yards, one target 7.62

So, let's see how our intrepid n00b did:

50 yards, .22:



I fired this rifle first, and sighted it in. It (or I) was shooting left, so I eventually got it sighted in. The 6-MOA dot in the Trijicon amber-dot sight covered the entire central diamond of the target.

100 yards, .22:


Sighted in, the dot in the sight covered the whole target. I'm still shooting a bit left.

100 yards, 7.62mm:


Now, I am proud of this. Fairly tight group in the center, with some vertical stringing, then two shots at each corner target.

200 yards, 7.6smm:


Now, I am quite proud of this. Sure, I was aiming for the center target, but I ended up with a fairly tight grouping, predictably 2-MOA or 4" low, with a rifle sighted for 100 yards. This is vastly better than I did before.

What made the difference with the M-14? I was holding onto the Grip-Pod at the front. Previously, I had my left hand under the stock of the rifle in a fist, and by shaping my fist, I changed the point of aim in a fairly stable way. The fore end of the rifle was on the Grip-Pod. Well, when the rifle fired, there was a bit of jumping around going on before the bullet left the barrel. Thus, the impacts were a bit imprecise.

Following the advice of my elders, I held onto the Grip-Pod and pulled the rifle into my shoulder tightly. The problem of heartbeat remained, so I needed, as before, to fire after the heartbeat. I used my shoulder only to aim the rifle, and concentrated on having a smooth trigger pull on that sweet trigger. (I have learned the value of the M14/Garand type trigger after experiencing a stock AR-15 trigger and a PACT AR-15 Gold Trigger. Let me tell you: I'm buying more Gold Trigger units for my other AR-15s. Any comparison between the stock trigger and a Gold Trigger necessarily involves some profanity as modifiers to adulations and general heaven-ward eye gestures.) By providing extra stability to the fore-end while firing, my grouping became tighter.

I'm sure this is no surprise to any true rifleman, but remember where I am starting on this journey: no tradition, no education, and my military training was bloody useless in this regard. (Note to US Air Force: you can recover from some of the other services imprecation of "not really being a military service" if you start taking riflery, for both enlisted and officers, seriously. Who cares if it is not directly related to service goals? The common bond of being skilled riflemen will establish a respect common from fighter pilot to orderly.)

I have always relied on the kindness of strangers

Another lovely morning at the range.

I began with a couple shoot-n-see targets set up at the 25 yard line so I could continue fine-tuning the sight on the .22 M-4gery upper for eventual use by my children as a learner's rifle. Each target had a central target spot, with another in each corner. Starting on the left and aiming at the center, I dialed in the sight so my grouping was approximately centered, then I moved to the corner targets for a little more fine adjustment, until on the right target I was shooting a fairly tight group. The dot in the Trijicon sight is 6 MOA, so that's a 1.5" circle at 25 yards, which, all in all, is not bad for a CQB reflex sight. The target spot themselves were 2" across, so all I had to do was center the dot in the square.

Moving the target out to 50 yards exposes the weaknesses in my technique more, but the grouping is fairly good.



Not bad considering the circle obscured the target.

At this point, I switched to the M-14, and I had four shoot-n-see targets at 100 yards, and two at 200 yards.

As the scope has to be re-mounted to the rifle each time I shoot it (I was using it as a spotting scope earlier), my first target was used for sighting it in coarsely with ten shots in three groups of three plus a finisher, the second used for a group of 10 to establish another adjustment, and the third for another group of ten for a finer adjustment. The fourth target I was really proud of. Except for one flier (which I knew right after I fired it) the other nine shots landed in a 1 MOA cluster around the aiming point.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of this due to my dismay at the performance at 200 yards. Two targets, ten rounds each, and blessed few hits on those, although (to salvage something of my self-esteem), the grouping was better than last time, and the shot placement was creditable to a man-sized target.
I have pictures, but they're not worth uploading.

Now, I should expect to have 1" of bullet drop from 100 yards to 200 yards, and I can easily manually do that overhold. That in no way explains my results. Definitely not Boomershoot quality.

Here's where the kindness of strangers comes in. To my right at the range were a group of guys, one of which was mostly spotting for the others. He looked at my targets, and after I explained what I was doing, he had this to say about my fourth target, the good one, "That's pretty good shooting, considering what you were doing."

My basic problem, it seems is that I'd not holding the fore-end at all. I have my right on the pistol grip, the butt in the shoulder, and I'm using my left hand as a fine-adjustment under the end of the stock at my right shoulder. The front of the rifle is on a bipod (GripPod, actually). So, with the front end resting stably on the bipod, I was letting it go about its merry business while I took care of business from the rear. That laissez faire attitude towards the front of the rifle is apparently causing me some accuracy problems at long rage. I could also add to the some end-of-session anxiousness which caused me to rush some shots. Perhaps the best thing to do is to sight in, then move on to the 200 yards immediately.

Very late review of Monster Hunter International

For our anniversary, I got my wife a Jawbone Bluetooth headset. She got me MHI.

We procured the novel by means of a family visit to the local Barnes and Noble. There was a gaping hole in the SciFi section where a Larry Correia-sized hole should have been filled. Fortunately, they had a copy in the back.

Now, being a family man, I could not start reading right away. I had to wait until the fatherly duties had been performed and the brood had been put to bed. So, 8:20pm, I started on chapter 8 (because I had read chapters 1 through 7 online) with a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon to accompany.

I finished at 2:43am. There was somewhat less Cab Sav in the house.

I have to agree with Caleb: MHI is like fanfic for the confluence of D&D geeks and gun nuts, except it does not bear the aroma of suck that most fanfic exudes. In fact, it smells of Awesome.

I'm gonna read it again.

Accomplishment

I've just returned from checking on the various sleeping members of the family. Upon entering my 22-month old son's room, I found him asleep on top of the covers, and his toddler-sized bed also included the following:

• Books, several, in pile, up to 12"x 18" in size
  
• Bear, one count, plush, large, white, teddy
  
• Pirate ship, one count, 18-inch long equipped with 3"/1.5 caliber swivel gun, mechanically fired
• Pirate, one count, 3" tall, assigned to the HMS Arrrr.
• Parrot, one count, pirate, assigned to same.
  
• Toy, one count, 8-inch diameter, bash-the-button carousel type with musical features
  
• Chair, toddler sized, made of foam and upholstered with Spiderman motif
• Pillow, one count, toddler size, authorized for use with bed
• Kitty cat, one count, plush, authorized for sleeping with

For some reason, I am very proud to have had to remove a pirate ship from his bed before I could tuck him in.

Gun nut?

New Jovian Thunderbolt (hat tip to JayG) provides the Jeff Foxworthy-esque list, for which I offer my meager evidence:

I own fifteen Magpul 30-round AR-15 magazines, purchased in October 2008.

I own no .223/5.56 AR-15 uppers.

Yet.

Welcome, MArooned readers

JayG was kind enough to reciprocally link my blog, for which I will evermore gratefully give him credit.

Please feel free to comment on some of the older gun-posts. I'm hoping that I, the FNG at riflery, will have some of my ignorance cured, and in so doing, provide a good reference for other newbies of the fine American tradition.

I promise more soon: a pink AR-15, appropriate for a small girl. Stay tuned!

In which I put holes in paper

...and only somewhat reliably. I post this in hopes that someone out there will tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Let us begin on a pleasant Father's Day afternoon at the range. Pleasant, in that as I arrive, winds are southerly at about 15 knots and a shower is pushing through. As my keen weather sense told me, however, my timing is perfect, as it takes time to unpack the rifle, mount the optics, assemble the target stands, and shoot the breeze with another club member. Just as my targets were ready to be taken down-range, the squall line passed, the sun came out and the wind calmed.


Basic lay-out at this point:

At 100 yards, four (4) sight-in targets mounted with blaze orange duct-tape to the target stand.

At 200 Yards, slightly to the right and above the 100 yard target, two (2) sight-in targets.

I am shooting Lithuanian mil-surp 7.62 NATO ammunition. We know that this ammo is a good match for the M-14 because the Honorable William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States of America (1992-1998), rather than let surplus M-14s be de-milled to be semi-auto only (a simple, irreversible and cheap procedure) and sold through the CMP, instead gave a lot of them away to foreign nations and had much of the rest of the surplus stock destroyed. Lithuania was a beneficiary of American generosity, and thus they had to procure well matched ammunition for their new precision rifles.



So, first target goal: verify zero of the re-mounted optics. All-in all, not bad. I had a couple fliers, and I could tell that I had done so right after the shot went off.

I'm shooting from the bench with the Grip-pod collapsed down, the rifle is resting on the "toes" of the bipod feet. I can adjust aim from the positioning of my shoulder and my left hand tucked under the butt of the stock to provide some fine control. I'm sure this is considered disastrous technique, but it seems as stable as if I has locked the rifle in a pintle mount.

Mostly, I though the grouping was to the right a bit, so I adjusted the scope right 5 clicks, with 1 click = 1/10 MOA.



Second target, I don't think I did any better.



Third target, I think I brought it more to the center, but I'm still veering right and ranging pretty widely vertically.



Now, I know this looks worse that the previous three, but this one was an experiment: I was testing out my new glasses prescription and using just the iron sights. The front blade obscured the entire center square of the target. I'm shooting right and low, and my grouping is rather wide, but I'm feeling rather good that the grouping is only twice the size of my 20x scope-magnified groupings.



The less I say about by 200 yard targets (this being the second target), the better. Suffice to say that my shooting low and right is amplified due to the increase range and another 1" of bullet drop. Any left handed desperadoes out there better watch out: I'm going to seriously graze your shootin' arm and love handles.



I can't blame my inaccuracies on anything but my skill. I had excellent sight picture through the scope. The picture is good enough that when I held my half-breath for the shot, I could see my heartbeat moving the scope reticule. I tried to keep my squeeze on the trigger just tight enough that I could fire right after my heart beat.



In this image, you can just barely see the iron sight picture. It's much too bright for my iPhone to take a good image of the target, but you can see the front post and the blade to either side, though the rear aperture and under the scope, through the gaps in the A.R.M.S #22 scope rings. It I didn't have the rubber MAPGUL ladder-type rail protectors on the upper rail, there would be a little more of the lower arc of the sight picture.

So, the question now is what do I need to do to correct my technique. These results are OK to land a round on a human-sized target at about 200 yards, but the M-14 is spec'ed to be good out to 500 yards in the hands of an infantryman. My range can do 500 yards, but I'm sure I'd be harassing the moles rather than landing hits.

Time to do what I always intended to do.

I may have started this blog for the purposes of classwork, but under it all, I intended some day to be a gun blogger.

So, I'll start with My Very Favorite Gun™: my M-14.

Specifications as shown:

• LBR Arms M-14 semiautomatic M-14 receiver
• Sage International enhanced battle rifle stock with stripper clip sight base
• A.R.M.S #22 medium height scope rings
• Leupold VX-3L scope
• Grippod GPS02
• 20 round magazine

Assembled with GI parts by master M-14 armorer Ted Brown

OK, I have the gear. Now what am I going to do with it?

I'm going to shoot it of course!

Let's lay out clearly where I'm starting from: my family was never into firearms of any kind, so I don't have a background from that angle.

I was an officer in the Air Force, but if you think that qualifying with a 9mm Beretta a few times lends any general familiarity with firearms, you've got another thing coming. I'd opine that I learned more about poker while in the Air Force than I did about firearms.

I came to my real passion for firearms courtesy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the bequest of my Grandfather.

When my grandfather passed on, he specified three things in his will for me:

• A YF-16 roll-out coin (he worked for General Dynamics)
• A framed picture of several F-16 models, including the F-16XL (a company executive-only perk, surreptitiously acquired)
• A Colt 1911 Series 70

My first duty station in the USAF was England, so, obviously, I couldn't take possession of the pistol there.

My second duty station was Hanscom AFB, where I supposedly could take possession of the pistol. Some people would get discouraged by the barriers Massachusetts puts up against firearm ownership. I got determined and pissed off. Once you take the dive, you might as well learn to swim.

So, now I have a rifle, and a fine one. One that, as I required of Mr Brown, could absolutely out-shoot me. My challenge is to rise to the capabilities of my rifle.

So, that is the theme of this blog, when I 'm not digressing off onto tangents: My process of learning to shoot. Eventually, it will also include the progress of my offspring learning to shoot in about 1.5 years.