Bryan,
this was a bullet that attracted and intrigued me at the time of its launch, but one rarely sees a mention of it these days. I do hope it has been at least reasonably successful for Berger Bullets.
If I remember correctly, the bullet was designed with a particular set of parameters in mind in order to provide class beating trans and subsonic performance at long ranges. That was MVs in the 2,550-2,650 fps band and a rifling pitch rate of 1-11.25" as adopted by the US military for shorter barrel 'marksman' rifles and now used by many tactical rifle builders / competitors and by Remington with some of its heavy barrel 308 models.
If I've done my sums right, that rifling twist / MV combination will see initial bullet rotation of 166,400 rpm (2,600 fps MV). I saw this bullet as an possible way of getting a short-barrel 308 Win Howa Varminter (1-12" twist) to perform at 800-1,000 yards, not competitively obviously against a proper 30-inch barrel custom FTR rifle, but so that it'll at least perform consistently. With the 1-12" twist rate, an MV of 2,773 fps gives the same bullet rotational speed as the original specifications set.
I subsequently worked a load up at 100 yards that grouped as well as this budget kit was capable of, ie on or a bit better than half-MOA, and that produced 2,755 fps with IMR-4895. I subsequently loaded 25 rounds to try in a long-range comp, but lots of things (like the FCWC at Raton two years ago) sort of got in the way, and I'm extremely reluctant anyway to use up one of the four 1,000 yard club competition slots I get every year with an uncompetitive rifle when I'm fighting for club championship points in F-Open.
The question is have I taken a simplistic approach on the rotation rate issue, or is it valid?
(The Berger Ballistics program forecasts a 1,000 yard terminal speed of 1,299 fps in typical conditions on the range used which looks pretty good, and the twist rate calculator gives a near ideal Sg of 1.64.)
this was a bullet that attracted and intrigued me at the time of its launch, but one rarely sees a mention of it these days. I do hope it has been at least reasonably successful for Berger Bullets.
If I remember correctly, the bullet was designed with a particular set of parameters in mind in order to provide class beating trans and subsonic performance at long ranges. That was MVs in the 2,550-2,650 fps band and a rifling pitch rate of 1-11.25" as adopted by the US military for shorter barrel 'marksman' rifles and now used by many tactical rifle builders / competitors and by Remington with some of its heavy barrel 308 models.
If I've done my sums right, that rifling twist / MV combination will see initial bullet rotation of 166,400 rpm (2,600 fps MV). I saw this bullet as an possible way of getting a short-barrel 308 Win Howa Varminter (1-12" twist) to perform at 800-1,000 yards, not competitively obviously against a proper 30-inch barrel custom FTR rifle, but so that it'll at least perform consistently. With the 1-12" twist rate, an MV of 2,773 fps gives the same bullet rotational speed as the original specifications set.
I subsequently worked a load up at 100 yards that grouped as well as this budget kit was capable of, ie on or a bit better than half-MOA, and that produced 2,755 fps with IMR-4895. I subsequently loaded 25 rounds to try in a long-range comp, but lots of things (like the FCWC at Raton two years ago) sort of got in the way, and I'm extremely reluctant anyway to use up one of the four 1,000 yard club competition slots I get every year with an uncompetitive rifle when I'm fighting for club championship points in F-Open.
The question is have I taken a simplistic approach on the rotation rate issue, or is it valid?
(The Berger Ballistics program forecasts a 1,000 yard terminal speed of 1,299 fps in typical conditions on the range used which looks pretty good, and the twist rate calculator gives a near ideal Sg of 1.64.)
