A4orgery at 1000 yards

[wolley]

Just for grins I shot my A4orgery at our 1000yd match today.
It wasn't pretty! 513-6X.
2 misses and lots of 8s and 9s.
I went to the match with this idea of loosening the rear tang screw to see if it would help. 1st string was fairly loose, about 15inch/lbs. 173-1 with a miss low.
2nd string retightened to about 50inch/lbs 160-2 with a miss low.
3rd string, completely loosened both front and rear and then retightened to as tight as I can with a screwdriver, about 65inch/lbs. 180-3 and no misses.
I saw elevation shifts of 50 inches with out touching the scope.
Speaking of scope. The Weaver K2.5 is not a scope! The cross hairs cover 75% of the aiming black on the LR target and the black is 44" across. Parallax out the wazoo. Some of my elevation issues were related to this and not being able to get my head back far enough to eliminate the tunnel. When shooting with the tunnel the parallax is worst.
Shooting off bags it is OK where it is but today I shot slung up and that puts my head way too close.
I told myself that I'd be thrilled if it shot 550 and happy if I broke 500. I broke 500 but I'm not really happy. I cleaned the 600 target at Perry during the Vintage Sniper match so I expected better.
Shooting 57g of IMR4350 and a Lapua 155g Scenar for 3010fps. Well above transonic at 1000.

[DMark]

wolley,

Don't understand why you are being so hard on your results.

JMHO, but it sounds like very good shooting results for a mid 20th century weapon-of-war. It may be only my limited combat experience, but I never saw a Ten Ring on a bad guy.

Sometimes I think we forget that what the ground commander wanted from his snipers shooting the 03A4 were hits - - - any hit on the enemy.

I also think that taking a shot with a K2.5 Waver out to 1000yd would be bad tactics and could invite a response from a battery of german 88s.

[Marine A5 Sniper Rifle]

During WWI, it was common for the Marines to engage the enemy at 800 yards with devastating effect. One of the best examples was the initial repulse of the German army at Hill 142. Not one of the Germans reached the Marine line. The Germans were stunned. The point is that another 200 yards with a A4 would have been a cakewalk. Those guys could shoot, and one battalion commander insisted every man be an Expert.

jt

[DMark]

jt,

No question in regard to the accuracy of the 03 platform and the 30.06 - - - in the hands of a well trained Marine!

But I think that in this case, the OP has found the limits of the 03A4 sighting system (2.5X) out at 1000yd.

Now, if he was shooting with a 8X Unertl........

[wolley]

The rifle will shoot inside of an MOA at 200yds so I kind of expected a little more from it.
That being said the limiting factor really is the Weaver and with better sights I'm reasonably sure it would have held the 9 ring.
Or I can look at it this way. A 513 is 85.5% and the 10 ring is 20" wide so I would have hit a man with 85% of the shots.
My next project is to build a 1941 Sniper with the Unertl clone.

[holdover]

How about having Dan in NY, change out the cross hair to a finer one? Good score either way.

[wolley]

How about having Dan in NY, change out the cross hair to a finer one? Good score either way.

Tell me more? Who, where, how much and how long?
I bought a Weaver with a post but it turned out to be a 60-B series and the occular is 1/4" larger and won't fit without basically butchering the rifle.

[stretch74]

Food for thought. I am not sure if it would be legal for CMP, but perhaps you can mill the Redfield Junior at the rear of the base so that you have adequate clearance for the objective locking ring so you can mount the K2.5 similar to the Lyman Alaskan to gain adequate eye relief for prone while in the sling. Perhaps if your crosshairs are to thick for a center hold, try a six o'clock hold...if you can get enough elevation out of the scope. Shimming the base may help to get you there if you are close. I saw an Army training film once that stated the standard for engaging a man sized target at 1000 yards was 50 percent with a 1903 using the tangent sight. The cone of fire was large, and the beaten zone was close to that of a machinegun. Two or three men engaging the same target would make it pretty hot on the receiving end to be sure. Hot enought to turn back Pancho Villa and his men from 800 yards anyway. Holding the 8 ring on average at 1000 with an old girl like that the first time out is pretty fair shooting in anyones book. I expect you will crack the code...and when you do it will be interesting to find what you have learned. Good post.

[John Sukey]

While it might not shoot tight groups, people are a lot larger than a bulseye and a hit anywhere is gonna hurt.

[Art]

While it might not shoot tight groups, people are a lot larger than a bulseye and a hit anywhere is gonna hurt.

I don'k know John, the black on those 1,000 yard targets is pretty darn big. Some hits in the 20" 10 ring would miss an average size man. You are right though, 85% on that target would probably equate to 50-60% hits on a human being standing upright and not moving at that distance. Still not too darn bad with a rifle not really made with engaging at that range in mind.

I had an uncle who reflected once on his combat experiences and told me that it was an advantage to be a little guy. He said a bullet that kills a big man may only wound a little man and a bullet that wounds a big man is often a miss on a little man.

[Jim in Salt Lake]

We're thinking here that we'll have a vintage sniper relay at our long range matches this season. I'm getting the pieces together for my CMP rules 1903/Unertl rifle and plan to shoot in these, and also some of our midrange matches. We only have one regular vintage sniper match a year and it'd be crazy to build a rifle for one match. But, "crazy" doesn't stop me all the time......