Pegasus

BTW, on the subject of accurizing your AR; step no 1 is NOT to cut your barrel down to 13 inches. The basic rules of accuracy for any AR is to float a good barrel and shoot good ammo.

StainTrain, wind noise in a microphone is meaningless; you get that just breathing on it. Look at the ground, look around the target; nothing, not even any hint of mirage either. There was no wind. I am glad we now all agree that barrel length is important, especially when you go to longer distances and have higher accuracy requirements. I know what you mean about people being resistant to change; I fall in that category a lot as I get older; 60 in a few months. The wind tomorrow will be coming from the right at 4-8 gusting to 20MPH. May be some rain also, lots of mirage. Should be fun, good practice for the Nationals next month.

98Z5V, I did a search for your experiences with 300Blk loadings and brass quality and did not find anything right away. Would you be so kind as to either point me to the discussion(s) or recap for me your findings here, please?

Thanks for the nice welcome blue109. BTW, that's "elitist" and you need to learn to capitalize the first word of every sentence.

Yes, that is correct. Brass quality will factor into this equation. I start with virgin Lapua brass in my match rifles, but in my AT-10(T) I use Winchester brass. The ejection is violent especially compared to my bolt guns, so it's not worth spending the cash on Lapua. However, Winchester is good brass, it just needs more prep than Lapua at the first loading and after that it's pretty much the same. It is important to adjust your sizing die properly to get good brass life and you don't want head separation in a .308AR.

StainTrain, there is no wind to be seen anywhere on the video. If there is any, I would be funneled front or back, not side to side and I think you know that front and rear winds have little to no effect on the bullets. On the other hand the shooter was not holding the waterline worth a sh*t. At 800 yards, I can pretty much clean an F-class LR1-FC target; he was all over the place on that silhouette. It's silly to compare a 9inch .300 Blackout with a .308 Match rifle or sniper rifle at that range. The guy is trying to sell the rifle. It can do everything under perfect conditions. Is that really something you would foist on our military sniper teams? I wouldn't. Barrel length is important at long range, I don't really care who thinks it doesn't. Just got to a Palma match and look at the rifles. Go to Camp Perry and look at the rifles for the LR matches.

StainTrain, you posted a great message and I appreciate the fact you kept it on topic, well for the most part. I've been shooting competitively for over 30 years and for the last 8 years or so, it has been all F-class, F-TR to be exact, most of it at 1000 yards. I shot at least one NRA sanctioned competition every month at 1000 yards and have been doing this for all that time. As a matter of fact I will be shooting one tomorrow morning. My log books show more than 15,000 rounds fired competitively at 1000 yards; I think that allows me to navigate under the impression that I know a little bit about it. I hold ratings of NRA High Master at Mid-range and NRA Master at Long range, all in F-TR, with my trusty rusty .308 Winchester. The article we are discussing is what you call, an opinion. I specifically pulled a sentence from it to explain why it was wrong. At long range, conditions rule and if you can read and allow for them, you're toast. I have stated many times here that I am not a sniper, I know nothing of sniper craft, nor will I ever be a sniper. I am a competitive shooter. I never make any pretense that I would be able to do whatever it is that snipers do. Now, there is a reason why the military uses .300 Win Mags, .338 Lapua and 50BMG for long range snipping; can you guess what that would be? I was not aware that this forum was geared for snipers and snipers wannabees. I thought I could discuss ways and methodologies for accurizing 308ARs. When I look at my AR-10(T), I totally understand that it will never be able to keep up with my F-TR match rifles, at any distance. But I use my knowledge of what can be accomplished with a .308 Winchester to try to maximize the accuracy of my AR-10(T). And I am happy to share that knowledge with other owners of .308ARs. Finally, you seem like a reasonable person, certainly a lot more reasonable to some others here so I will just say this: I am a member of many forums and this one is about as nasty and aggressive as I have ever encountered. You may think this is a friendly welcoming crowd, it's not. But thanks for the welcome, I do appreciate it.

Thank you 392heminut, Gibbs, washguy and microgunner. Dane Armory, I may be a newbie to this site, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about. I would say there are some high post count members who have attitudes. Notice the spelling of that word. It's not arrogance if you can do it. And I think you mean that I may not "fare" well, notice the spelling of that word also. And thank you for the welcome.

Robocop1051. A neat video and one that I have seen before, but it's always fun to see it again. I watched the whole thing and it was great. I have two observations. 1- When he was shooting at the steel silhouette, there was not a breath of wind. He's in some type of valley or pit and the conditions are eliminated. All he has to contend with is elevation. Trust me when I say that conditions make a huge difference at long range. 2- About your last line: "... if you want to see how a Sniper... A truly accomplished sniper... views accuracy." I've said it before, I am not a sniper, never was and never will be. I am a competition shooter, an F-TR LR competition shooter. F-Class is not sniping. And just so you know I have competed alongside snipers from various branches and alphabet agencies over the years, some were retired and others were active duty on leave. We always extend a very warm welcome to them, as we have a special affinity with them. Remembering that this thread is about barrel length and its effect on accuracy; a 24 inch barrel shooting M118LR is hard pressed going against a 32 inch barrel spitting out substantially higher BC bullets at 1000 yards, in conditions. Sniping is not F-Class. And thanks for the nice welcome.

Matt.cross, I love your humor and I totally agree with you; a 32 inch AR would be more like a crew served weapon than something to take hunting or anything further than from the back of the SUV to the firing line. And thank you for the warm welcome. I had seen the video before and it is pretty awesome, Jerry is quite the shooter. Did you catch him on Stan Lee's Superhuman show last week on the History Channel? Amazing stuff.

If you are talking about the exact same style and composition for the bullets, then you are correct. But that's a limited view of what is available and the question was weights and twists; it didn't say anything one specific style. Survivalshop even mentioned there are many bullet types and weights. For example, if you compare a Sierra 175MK, arguably one of the best mag-length bullets, with a length of 1.240 inches to a Berger 155 Hybrid, which has a length of 1.280 inches, you can see that the heavier bullet is actually shorter than the lighter bullet and they are both BTHP, jacketed lead core bullets. You can be quite sure that even though the 155 only weighs 5 grains more than a 150gr FMJ-BT, it will require a faster twist to stabilize. And please, do not tell me what to do.

Thank you, planeflyer21. Nice OV-10A you got there. I will be in AZ next month for the FCNC.

I'm in the Houston area. Thanks for the kind words.

A small base die does not make a case shorter, unless you have adjusted it wrong. What a small base die does is to shrink the OD at the base of the case, hence the name "small base". You adjust the shoulder bump in a die by screwing it in or unscrewing it and using a comparator to measure. If you only measure the overall case length in your sizing operation, you're doing it all wrong. The .308 Winchester headspaces on the datum line which is a point midway in the shoulder where the outside diameter of the cartridge measures .400 inch, if memory serves. At that point the distance to the base of the case should be right around 1.634 inch give or take, and again that's from memory. So, what you want to do is take a fired case, and measure its length from the base to the datum line and then set your die (small base or regular F/L) to push back that shoulder a couple thousands, IF (and that's an important IF) you will be shooting it in the same rifle. If you want to shoot it in a variety of rifles, then push back the datum line to SAAMI specs. Now, if you cannot screw in the die any further and still have the press operate, you may want to look at other shellholders as the one you are using may be too thick or dirty. You can then trim the case to 2.005 or shorter, but only after it has been sized properly. Doing it any other way is pointless and will cause various unpleasantness. So, either SAAMI or .002 under your chamber. Also, when you resize, count to 5 when the case is fully in the die to give it time to resize, then lower the ram. People who just speed through the sizing operation are not doing it right. Small base dies do not work the brass more, if you use them all the time. This will only occur if the base has expanded due to sloppy chamber and or heavy loads. These cases are difficult to resize properly and will not chamber easily if some chambers even if all the other dimensions are right.

Thanks for the nice welcome folks. It should be fun around here. ^-^ I'll get the details of that rifle posted over the weekend. It's still a work in progress as I am the eternal tinkerer and what better platform to tinker with than the AR?