C7 Rack grade accuracy?

stephen492 said:
I worked in the weapons det. in Wainwright when it was the PPCLI battle school. You should have seen the tricks the troops used to get those rifles and guns clean. Brake cleaner, gel hand cleaner, routine hot showers for the weapons, scraping tools and screwdrivers. The instructors and all of the guys in the QM loved to jack up the recruits so you can understand why they were such fastidious "cleaners". Rifle "maintenance" is for civis. Despite all that, the c7s still seemed to shoot well enough.
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Wow...your post and C77's really brought back memories I'd long forgotten about!

But this brings up a point: considering the damage being done to precision tools belonging to the nation and the taxpayer...tools which should be cared for, which if undamaged can give you an edge in survival for the troops...I'm wondering if the Battleschool instructors shouldn't be threatened with military charges? I mean, let's think about this: the military correctly harps on us about care and maintenance of our weapons and equipment, insisting on a light coat of CLP for rust prevention, lube for reliable operation, cleaning the barrel for optimum accuracy and proper chambering/extraction... yet the specific demands of these instructors are having a significant unintended consequence in actually doing significant damage to the rifles.

I know that when I was in, if I'd been discovered to have damaged Crown equipment or weapons, I'd have faced military charges, even when I was a dummy Private. So why do we continue to let the battleschool staff insist on "cleaning standards" that damage equipment?!?!

Back when the C7 was still brand new, I remember getting a flyer from Diemaco at an airshow, describing the C7 and C8 barrels as they were existing in 1989. I remember clearly being totally stunned that they claimed a C7 barrel that was only subjected to standard "ball" ammunition (meaning no blanks abuse) and only semi-auto shooting, was supposed to last 25,000 rounds 'till the rifling was eroded bad enough that accuracy had grown to double group/MPI sizes as compared to a brand new barrel. I thought that was especially good. And for the next 5 years, every C7 I'd shot was capable of very tight accuracy...with three exceptions: Basic Training rifles, Battleschool rifles and the Elcan scoped C7's. Now, that's not to say those were "horrible", they just weren't nearly as "pin point accurate" as a well-kept C7 was capable of with a good shooter on a good day...but even an abused C7 was far more accurate than AK's or many other assault rifles, while being competitive with some of the better designs.

But when a C7 is cared for, and limit the full auto to just reasonable amounts, very limited or no blank use...wow. I mean really wow.

One day, using the iron sight Battleschool C7's, it was about -35, and we laid in the snow to shoot moving targets at 400m. I was getting around 70% hits...and I still can't quite believe it even today! But I wasn't the only one on the line that was getting such good results. Keep in mind, those were likely 10 years old by that point, lots of strains and abuse subjected to them, tens of thousands of rounds of blanks over the years...and it STILL performed like that?!?!? I'd think a Russian Spetnaz operator would be really jealous if he saw us all that day!
 
Ignorance kills...

Very few people understand cleaning for maintenance versus cleaning for damage (or inspection as they may call it).
 
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Luckily for my serial in brt, we had a couple of switched on post-bosnia and ethiopia infanteers as instructors and standards. Officially rifles had to be shiny inards, but unofficially, they knew the difference between maintenance and inspection clean and erred on common sense. They jacked us up on other things tho. This was 98.

They were teaching us gunfighter before it was even called gunfighter.that's of course, in bewteen the "reading from the pubs" lesson plans.

I really believe great instructors and standards lead to make great soldiers who give a sh1t about the shooting and c7 platform. That every movement, maintenance, cleaning, etc of the rifle has a specific purpose, and its not just to be shiny.
 
KevinB said:
volkov956 said:
I am guessing ur inquiring on the C7 CDF uses I myself got to use them while in the CDF

out of 3 i used including 1 C7A2 i myself do not like the reliability issues we encountered but I must say I prefer shooting the regular Solid Stock C7 then the Fold Out stock green one they would issue me an iron sight one tho :"/ always gave me that damn useless Trillium Optic One
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What on earth is the CDF?
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This is the internet equivalent of getting coined.
 
C77 said:
I've had a couple that would shoot MOA with selected lots of IVI.

That said, the new hammer forged barrels don't stay new for long. The BFA makes gas erosion around the crown. I've seen guys cleaning the crown with screwdrivers so it would shiny for turn-in.

Blanks make a ring of powder residue at the throat. That can make a bulged ring there if not cleaned out before firing ball. This for sure does not help accuracy.

Troops insist on using bore snakes. These won't clean blank firing residue sufficiently. They also drag filth into the bore if they are not washed after use.

A new barrel in the CF is worth it's weight in gold if you are on a rifle team just to get one that has not been blank raped to screw drivered.
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I remember when a distinguished member on the forum whom recently commented in this thread stating some time ago the training value of using blanks and BFAs It seemed a good point to me. good point on the snakes too
 
I personally patched a group fired by an RCR QM named Carlos that had 5 rounds under a single black patch at 200 yards. (yards, not meters, it was in Bisley.)

I've also personally fired a rifle that grouped 1.5" all day at 100, then over the course of a month, it opened up to over 4" at 100. That rifle, when checked by the base weapons shop, showed only 50% bore erosion...so it's replacement was refused until it was 100% eroded.

I've seen C-77 ammo in the 90s that easily grouped better than the rifle...I've seen C-77 ammo that had random fliers about 1/10 shots. That 10th round would be on paper, but it'd be well outside the group.

I've seen and used Elcans that worked fine on the range for thousands of rounds....including my own personally owned one, with no return to zero issues, with consistent groups, shot the box with it, it's GOOD, and others that crapped the bed and the elevation drum spins freely with no elevation changes.

I bore sighted an entire infantry platoon's worth of C-79's once. Something not one of those troops knew how to do. They were going to go on the range with them the next day....out of 37 rifles boresighted, most would have been on a 4 foot at 100, about 1/3 at 200....one of them would have missed his target at 200 by over 17 feet based on the corrections I had to make to his scope. Out of those 37 rifles...only ONE had a U/S scope.

There's good, there's bad, there's been ugly, but on average, in the 1990's, a C-7 would print about 1.5-2 MOA. In the 2000's, that seemed to open up a bit to around 2 MOA (steady) and now, I've seen unit rifles that grouped around 2.5-3 MOA.

YMMV, if you get one that's sub 2 MOA, that's pretty good. IMO.

NS
 
IIRC the 100 yard grouping test in the old PWT1 was 6" prone unsupported best 4 out of 5 for full points. All other serials up to PWT3 just seemed to award score for hitting ole Herman the German at various ranges under certain conditions - be it in the groin, chest, or right pinkie finger.

Knowing that to get a perfect score, you would basically have to be a 6 MOA shooter or better, logically, I would guess on average, the rifle is at least a 3MOA shooter. The claims of 1-2MOA sound reasonable, but what the gun (yes, gun) is capable of and what the operator is capable of are two separate things, and I think operator capability is most important.

I made a personal commitment when I released to be with as good or better of a shot than I was when in. I was an average shot, but I qualified regularly and made marksman one year.

Owning guns that are supposedly more accurate doesn't matter to me. My being able to shoot them more accurately is what matters to me.
 
My unit converted my rack rifle from a 2moa to an 8moa rifle by lending it to a BMQ course. Looking at the crown I can only assume some little snot tried to clean it with a cold chisel.
 
Lot of CF Bisley shooters commenting on here. Personally I've seen the odd group under 1" at 100m but in 2008 the average group size of the top 16 shooters in the entire CF was approx. 1.5-2.5 inches for a 10 round group. To me that is about as good as it gets. As far as some guns shooting better than others there is no doubt, however I bet that if we could take a wrench to the barrel nut 80% would go back to shooting sufficiently. Very few weapons techs are authorized to make the simple adjustments that can make a difference and that is a shame.
 
I was on a shooting team a few years ago. I had really nice grouping on the practice and sighting. On the first day of the match I had ok result; we had a good wind at Connaught and for my first competition it was hard to gauge. Second day, less wind but for some reason the Eclan lost its 0, I had issue getting on paper!
 
Gunnerlove said:
My unit converted my rack rifle from a 2moa to an 8moa rifle by lending it to a BMQ course. Looking at the crown I can only assume some little snot tried to clean it with a cold chisel.
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EVERYTHING HAS TO BE SHINY.
To be fair it it probably wasn't the recruit's fault but rather that of course staff for insisting that the crown be absolutely spotless. I ran into this after a range day when one of the new guys started going at her crown with a chamber brush. Upon correcting her and explaining why it was a bad idea, she told me it was something that she picked up on her BMQ.
 
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