Ladder Testing

Taylor-Made

Taylor-Made

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I am slowly building myself what I hope will be a precision rifle. As I have added components and dropped money on gunsmithing I have noticed small improvements in my groupings using factory (cheap) ammo. I finished my first batch of reloads (.224 69g SMK) and holy smoke. I couldn't believe how tight the 14 shot grouping was. Unfortunately it was a ladder test with nearly 3 grains between the two extremes. I figured out that 200 yards wasn't far enough to allow the test results to be visible so today I stretched it back to 300. Murphy showed up and brought a small cross wind with him. The result was a target with good separation in bullet holes however, instead of the holes going straight up like I expected they rose and went right (into the wind)

Here's my theory: As the speed of the projectiles increased with more powder the flight time and the bullets ability to buck the wind improved causing not only the bullets to strike higher but slowly more and more into the direction of the wind.

Am I on the right track or should I go back to knitting on the couch?
 
Another viewpoint: http://www.longrangehunting.com/articles/reloading-load-tuning-1.php

Wind drift is solely a function of ballistic coefficient and velocity. If your wind was constant and you used the same bullets throughout the test, then the higher the velocity, the less the wind drift. This would give you the results you describe.

If you want to gain a better understanding of long range and precision shooting, the Brian Litz book is a good place to start.

Mark
 
I would suggest your rifle is perfectly bedded. It should shoot any good ammo. Just build a load with the velocity you want and fire away.
 
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